LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




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Who wrote the Bible? 



A BOOK FOR THE PEOPLE 



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WASHINGTON GLADDEN 



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BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 

1891 



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Copyright, 1891, 
By WASHINGTON GLADDEN. 



All rights reserved. 



The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., U.S.A. 
Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton & Co. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER PAGE 

I. A Look into the Hebrew Bible . i 

II. What did Moses write ? . . . . .17 

III. Sources of the Pentateuch .... 44 

IV. The Earlier Hebrew Histories . . .71 
V. The Hebrew Prophecies ..,..101 

VI. The Later Hebrew Histories . . . .144 

VII. The Poetical Books .177 

VIII. The Earlier New Testament Writings . . 207 

IX. The Origin of the Gospels . . . .237 

X. New Testament History and Prophecy . . 267 

XI. The Canon 298 

XII. How the Books were written .... 327 

XIII. How much is the Bible worth ? . . .351 



WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 



CHAPTER I. 

A LOOK INTO THE HEBREW BIBLE. 

The aim of this volume is to put into compact 
and popular form, for the benefit of intelligent 
readers, the principal facts upon which scholars 
are now generally agreed concerning the literary 
history of the Bible. The doctrines taught in 
the Bible will not be discussed ; its claims to a 
supernatural origin will jiot be the principal mat- 
ter of inquiry ; the book will concern itself chiefly 
with those purely natural and human agencies 
which have been employed in writing, transcrib- 
ing, editing, preserving, transmitting, translating, 
and publishing the Bible. 

The writer of this book has no difficulty in be- 
lieving that the Bible contains supernatural ele- 
ments. He is ready to affirm that other than 
natural forces have been employed in producing 
it. It is to these superhuman elements in it that 
reference and appeal are most frequently made. 
But the Bible has a natural history also. It is a 
book among books. It is a phenomenon among 



2 WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

phenomena. Its origin and growth in this world 
can be studied as those of any other natural ob- 
ject can be studied. The old apple-tree growing 
in my garden is the witness to me of some tran- 
scendent truths, the shrine of mysteries that I 
cannot unravel. What the life is that was hid- 
den in the seed from which it sprang, and that 
has shaped all its growth, coordinating the forces 
of nature, and producing this individual form and 
this particular variety of fruit, — this I do not 
know. There are questions here that no man of 
science can answer. Life in the seed of the apple 
as well as in the soul of man is a mystery. But 
there are some things about the apple-tree that 
may be known. I may know — if any one has 
been curious enough to keep the record — when 
the seed was planted, when the shoot first ap- 
peared above the ground, how many branches it 
had when it was five years old, how high it was 
when it was ten years old, when this limb and 
that twig were added, when the first blossom ap- 
peared, when that branch was grafted and those 
others were trimmed off. All this knowledge I 
may have gained ; and in setting forth these facts, 
or such as these, concerning the natural history 
of the tree, I do not assume that I am telling all 
about the life that is in it. In like manner we 
may study the origin and growth of the Bible 
without attempting to decide the deeper ques- 
tions concerning the inspiration of its writers and 
the meaning of the truths they reveal. 



A LOOK INTO THE HEBREW BIBLE. 3 

That the Bible has a natural as well as a super- 
natural history is everywhere assumed upon its 
pages. It was written as other books are writ- 
ten, and it was preserved and transmitted as 
other books are preserved and transmitted. It 
did not come into being in any such marvelous 
way as that in which Joseph Smith's " Book of 
Mormon," for example, is said to have been pro- 
duced. The story is, that an angel appeared to 
Smith and told him where he would find this 
book ; that he went to the spot designated, and 
found in a stone box a volume six inches thick, 
composed of thin gold plates, eight inches by 
seven, held together by three gold rings ; that 
these plates were covered with writing in the 
" Reformed Egyptian "tongue, and that with this 
book were "the Urim and the Thummim," a pair 
of supernatural spectacles, by means of which he 
was able to read and translate this " Reformed 
Egyptian " language. This is the sort of story 
which has been believed, in this nineteenth cen- 
tury, by tens of thousands of Mormon votaries. 
Concerning the books of the Bible no such aston- 
ishing stories are told. Nevertheless some good 
people seem inclined to think that if such stories 
are not told, they might well be ; they imagine 
that the Bible must have originated in a manner 
purely miraculous ; and though they know very 
little about its origin, they conceive of it as a book 
that was written in heaven in the English tongue, 
divided there into chapters and verses, with head 



4 WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

lines and reference marks, printed in small pica, 
bound in calf, and sent down to earth by angels 
in its present form. What I desire to show is, 
that the work of putting the Bible into its pres- 
ent form was not done in heaven, but on earth ; 
that it was not done by angels, but by men ; that 
it was not done all at once, but a little at a time, 
the work of preparing and perfecting it extending 
over several centuries, and employing the labors 
of many men in different lands and long-divided 
generations. And this history of the Bible as a 
book, and of the natural and human agencies em- 
ployed in producing it, will prove, I trust, of much 
interest to those who care to study it. 

Mr. Huxley has written a delightful treatise on 
"A Piece of Chalk/' and another on "The Cray- 
fish ;" a French writer has produced an enter- 
taining volume entitled "The Story of a Stick ;" 
the books of the Bible, considered from a scien- 
tific or bibliographical point of view, should re- 
pay our study not less richly than such simple, 
natural objects. 

A great amount of study has been expended 
of late on the Scriptures, and the conclusions 
reached by this study are of immense importance. 
What is called the Higher Criticism has been 
busy scanning these old writings, and trying to 
find out all about them. What is the Higher 
Criticism ? It is the attempt to learn from the 
Scriptures themselves the truth about their ori- 
gin. It consists in a careful study of the Ian- 



A LOOK INTO THE HEBREW BIBLE. 5 

guage of the books, of the manners and customs 
referred to in them, of the historical facts men- 
tioned by them ; it compares part with part, and 
book with book, to discover agreements, if they 
exist, and discrepancies, that they may be recon- 
ciled. This Higher Criticism has subjected these 
old writings to such an analysis and inspection 
as no other writings have ever undergone. Some 
of this work has undoubtedly been destructive. 
It has started out with the assumption that these 
books are in no respect different from other sa- 
cred books ; that they are no more a revelation 
from God than the Zendavesta or the Nibelungen 
Lied is a revelation from God ; and it has bent 
its energies to discrediting, in every way, the ve- 
racity and the authority of our Scriptures. But 
much of this criticism has been thoroughly can- 
did and reverent, even conservative in its temper 
and purpose. It has not been unwilling to look 
at the facts ; but it has held toward the Bible a 
devout and sympathetic attitude ; it believes it to 
contain, as no other book in the world contains, 
the message of God to men ; and it has only 
sought to learn from the Bible itself how that 
message has been conveyed. It is this conserva- 
tive criticism whose leadership will be followed 
in these studies. No conclusions respecting the 
history of these writings will be stated which are 
not accepted by conservative scholars. Never- 
theless it must be remembered that the results of 
conservative scholarship have been very imper- 



6 WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

fectly reported to the laity of the churches. 
Many facts about the Bible are now known by 
intelligent ministers of which their congregations 
do not hear. An anxious and not unnatural feel- 
ing has prevailed that the faith of the people in 
the Bible would be shaken if the facts were 
known. The belief that the truth is the safest 
thing in the world, and that the things which 
cannot be shaken will remain after it is all told, 
has led to the preparation of this volume. 

I have no doubt, however, that some of the 
statements which follow will fall upon some 
minds with a shock of surprise. The facts which 
will be brought to light will conflict very sharply 
with some of the traditional theories about the 
Bible. Some of my readers may be inclined to 
fear that the foundations of faith are giving way. 
Let me, at the outset, request all such to suspend 
their judgment and read the book through before 
they come to such a conclusion. Doubtless it 
will be necessary to make some readjustment of 
theories ; to look at the Bible less as a miracu- 
lous and more as a spiritual product ; to put less 
emphasis upon the letter and more upon the 
spirit ; but after all this is done it may appear 
that the Bible is worth more to us than it ever 
was before, because we have learned how rightly 
to value it. 

The word " Bible " is not a biblical word. The 
Old Testament writings were in the hands of the 



A LOOK INTO THE HEBREW BIBLE 7 

men who wrote the books of the New Testament, 
but they do not call these writings the Bible ; 
they name them the Scriptures, the Holy Scrip- 
tures, the Sacred Writings, or else they refer to 
them under the names that were given to specific 
parts of them, as the Law, the Prophets, or the 
Psalms. Our word Bible comes from a word 
which began to be applied to the sacred writings 
as a whole about four hundred years after Christ. 
It is a Greek plural noun, meaning the books, or 
the little books. These writings were called by 
this plural name for about eight hundred years ; 
it was not till the thirteenth century that they 
began to be familiarly spoken of as a single book. 
This fact, of itself, is instructive. For though a 
certain spiritual unity does pervade these sacred 
writings, yet they are a collection of books, rather 
than one book. The early Christians, who hon- 
ored and prized them sufficiently, always spoke 
of them as "The Books," rather than as "The 
Book," — and their name was more accurate than 
ours. 

The names Old and New Testament are Bible 
words ; that is to say we find the names in our 
English Bibles, though they are not used to de- 
scribe these books. Paul calls the old dispensa- 
tion the old covenant ; and that phrase came 
into general use among the early Christians as 
contrasted with the Christian dispensation which 
they called the new covenant ; therefore Greek- 
speaking Christians used to talk about " the books 



8 WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

of the old covenant," and " the books of the new 
covenant ; " and by and by they shortened the 
phrase and sometimes called the two collections 
simply " Old Covenant" and " New Covenant." 
When the Latin-speaking Christians began to use 
the same terms, they translated the Greek word 
" covenant" by the word " testament" which 
means a will, and which does not fairly convey 
the sense of the Greek word. And so it was 
that these two collections of sacred writings be- 
gan to be called The Old Testament and The 
New Testament. It is the former of these that 
we are first to study. 

When Jesus Christ was on the earth he often 
quoted in his discourses from the Jewish Scrip- 
tures, and referred to them in his conversations. 
His apostles and the other New Testament 
writers also quote freely from the same Scrip- 
tures, and books of the early Christian Fathers 
are full of references to them. What were these 
Jewish Scriptures ? 

At the time when our Lord was on the earth, 
the sacred writings of the Jews were collected in 
two different forms. The Palestinian collection, 
so called, was written in the Hebrew language, and 
the Alexandrian collection, called the Septuagint, 
in the Greek. For many years a large colony 
of devout and learned Jews had lived in Alexan- 
dria; and as the Greek language was spoken 
there, and had become their common speech, 
they translated their sacred writings into Greek. 



A LOOK INTO THE HEBREW BIBLE. g 

This translation soon came into general use, be- 
cause there were everywhere many Jews who 
knew Greek well enough but knew no Hebrew 
at all. When our Lord was on earth, the He- 
brew was a dead language ; it may have been the 
language of the temple, as Latin is now the lan- 
guage of the Roman Catholic mass ; but the com- 
mon people did not understand it ; the vernac- 
ular of the Palestinian Jews was the Aramaic, 
a language similar to the Hebrew, sometimes 
called the later Hebrew, and having some such 
relation to it as the English has to the German 
tongue. There is some dispute as to the time 
when the Jews lost the use of their own lan- 
guage and adopted the Aramaic ; many of the 
Jewish historians hold^the view that the people 
who came back from the captivity to Jerusalem 
had learned to use the Aramaic as their com- 
mon speech, and that the Hebrew Scriptures had 
to be interpreted when they were read to them. 
Others think that this change in language took 
place a little later, and that it resulted in great 
measure from the close intercourse of the Jews 
with the peoples round about them in Palestine, 
most of whom used the Aramaic. At any rate 
the change had taken place before the coming 
of Christ, so that no Hebrew was then spoken 
familiarly in Palestine. When "the Hebrew 
tongue " is mentioned in the New Testament it 
is the Aramaic that is meant, and not the an- 
cient Hebrew. The Greek, on the other hand, 



IO WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

was a living language ; it was spoken on the 
streets and in the markets everywhere, and many 
Jews understood it almost as well as they did 
their Aramaic vernacular, just as many of the 
people of Constantinople and the Levant now 
speak French more fluently than their native 
tongues. The Greek version of the Scriptures 
was, for this reason, more freely used by the 
Jews even in Palestine than the Hebrew ori- 
ginal ; it was from the Septuagint that Christ and 
his apostles made most of their quotations. Out 
of three hundred and fifty citations in the New 
Testament from the Old Testament writings 
about three hundred appear to be directly from 
the Greek version made at Alexandria. Between 
these two collections of sacred writings, the one 
written in Hebrew, then a dead language, and the 
other in Greek, — the one used by scholars only, 
and the other by the common people, — there 
were some important differences, not only in 
the phraseology and in the arrangement of the 
books, but in the contents themselves. Of these 
I shall speak more fully in the following chapters. 
It is to the Hebrew collection, which is the ori- 
ginal of these writings, and from which our Eng- 
lish Old Testament was translated, that we shall 
now give our attention. What were these He- 
brew Scriptures of which all the writers of the 
New Testament knew, and from which they some- 
times directly quote ? 

The contents of this collection were substan- 



A LOOK INTO THE HEBREW BIBLE. II 

tially if not exactly the same as those of our Old 
Testament, but they were arranged in very differ- 
ent order. Indeed they were regarded as three 
distinct groups of writings, rather than as one 
book, and the three groups were of different de- 
grees of sacredness and authority. Two of these 
divisions are frequently referred to in the New 
Testament, as The Law and The Prophets ; and 
the threefold division is doubtfully hinted at in 
Luke xxiv. 44, where our Lord speaks of the pre- 
dictions concerning himself which are found in 
the Law and the Prophets and in the Psalms. 

The first of these holy books of the Jews was, 
then, The Law contained in the first five books 
of our Bible, known among us as the Pentateuch, 
and called by the Jews sometimes simply " The 
Law," and sometimes " The Law of Moses." This 
was supposed to be the oldest portion of their 
Scriptures, and was by them regarded as much 
more sacred and authoritative than any other por- 
tion. To Moses, they said, God spake face to 
face ; to the other holy men much less distinctly. 
Consequently their appeal is most often to the 
law of Moses. 

The group of writings known as " The Pro- 
phets " is subdivided into the Earlier and the 
Later Prophets. The Earlier Prophets comprise 
Joshua, the Judges, the two books of Samuel, 
counted as one, and the two books of the Kings, 
counted also as one. The Later Prophets comprise 
Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the twelve Minor 



12 WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

Prophets, the last books in our Old Testament, — 
Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Na- 
hum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, 
and Malachi. These twelve were counted as one 
book; so that there were four volumes of the 
earlier and four of the later prophets. Why the 
Jews should have called Joshua, Judges, Samuel, 
and the Kings books of the Prophets is not clear ; 
perhaps because they were supposed to have been 
written by prophets ; perhaps because prophets 
have a conspicuous place in their histories. This 
portion of the Hebrew Scriptures, containing the 
four historical books named and the fifteen pro- 
phetical books (reckoned, however, as four), was 
regarded by the Jews as standing next in sacred- 
ness and value to the book of the Law. 

The third group of their Scriptures was known 
among them as Kethubim, or Writings, simply. 
Sometimes, possibly, they called it The Psalms, 
because the book of the Psalms was the initial 
book of the collection. It consisted of the Psalms, 
the Proverbs, Job, the Song of Solomon, Ruth, 
Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, Esther, Daniel, Ezra, 
Nehemiah, and the Chronicles. This group of 
writings was esteemed by the Jews as less sacred 
and authoritative than either of the other two 
groups ; the authors were supposed to have had 
a smaller measure of inspiration. Respecting 
two or three of these books there was also some 
dispute among the rabbis, as to their right to be 
regarded as sacred Scripture. 



A LOOK INTO THE HEBREW BIBLE. 1 3 

Such, then, were the Hebrew Scriptures in the 
days of our Lord, and such was the manner of 
their arrangement. 

They had, indeed, other books of a religious 
character, to which reference is sometimes made 
in the books of the Bible. In Numbers xxi. 14, 
15, we have a brief war song quoted from "The 
Book of the Wars of Jehovah/' a collection of 
which we have no other knowledge. In Joshua x. 
13, the story of the sun standing still over Gib- 
eon is said to have been quoted from " The Book 
of Jasher," and in 2 Samuel i. 18, the beautiful 
" Song of the Bow," written by David on the 
death of Saul and Jonathan, is said to be con- 
tained in the "Book of Jasher." It is evident 
that this must have been a collection of lyrics 
celebrating some of the great events of Hebrew 
history. The title seems to mean " The Book of 
the Just." The exploits of the worthies of Israel 
probably furnished its principal theme. 

In 1 Chronicles xxix. 29, we read : " Now the 
acts of David the king, first and last, behold they 
are written in the History of Samuel the Seer, 
and in the History of Nathan the Prophet, and 
in the History of Gad the Seer." There is no 
reason to doubt that the first named of these is 
the history contained in the books of Samuel in 
our Bible ; but the other two books are lost. We 
have another reference to the " History of Na- 
than," in 2 Chronicles ix. 29, — the concluding 
words of the sketch of King Solomon's life: 



14 WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

\ 

" Now the rest of the acts of Solomon, first and 
last, are they not written in the History of Na- 
than the Prophet, and in the Prophecy of Ahijah 
the Shilonite, and in the Visions of Iddo the Seer 
concerning Jeroboam the son of Nebat ?" Here 
are two more books of which we have no other 
knowledge ; their titles quoted upon the page of 
this chronicle are all that is left of them. A 
similar reference, in the last words of the sketch 
of Solomon's son Rehoboam, gives us our only 
knowledge of the " Histories of Shemaiah the 
Prophet." ** *'- 

In the Kings and in the Chronicles, reference 
is repeatedly made to the " Book? of the Chron- 
icles of the Kings of Israel," and the " Books of 
the Chronicles of the Kings of Judah," under 
which titles volumes that are now lost are 
brought to our notice. Undoubtedly much of 
the history in the biblical books of Kings and 
Chronicles was derived from these ancient an- 
nals. They are the sources from which the writ- 
ers of these books drew their materials. 

We are also told in 2 Chronicles xxvi. 22, that 
Isaiah wrote a history of the "Acts of Uzziah," 
which is wholly lost. 

Other casual references are made to historical 
writings of various sorts, composed by prophets 
and seers, and thus apparently accredited by the 
biblical writers as authoritative utterances of di- 
vine truth. Why were they suffered to perish ? 
Has not Emerson certified us that 



A LOOK INTO THE HEBREW BIBLE. 1 5 

" One accent of the Holy Ghost 
The heedless world has never lost ? " 

But this is a fond exaggeration. Mr. Emerson 
was certainly not himself inspired when he ut- 
tered it. Many and many an accent of the Holy 
Ghost has been lost by this heedless world. And 
it is not at all improbable that some of these his- 
tories of Nathan and Gad and Shemaiah held vi- 
tal and precious truth, — truth that the world has 
needed. The very fact that they are hopelessly 
lost raises some curious questions about the 
method of revelation. Is it to be supposed that 
the Providence which suffers whole books to be 
lost by men would infallibly guarantee those that 
remain against errors in the copies, and other 
imperfections ? As a matter of fact, we know 
that He has not so protected any of them. 

Still I doubt not that Providence has kept for 
us the best of this Hebrew literature. To say 
that it is the best literature that the world has 
produced is to say very little. It is separated 
widely from all other sacred writings. Its con- 
structive ideas are as far above those of the other 
books of religion as the heavens are above the 
earth. I pity the man who has had the Bible in 
his hand from, his infancy, and who has learned 
in his maturer years something of the literature 
of the other religions, but who now needs to have 
this statement verified. True it is that we find 
pure maxims, elevated thoughts, genuine faith, 
lofty morality, in many of the Bibles of the other 



1 6 WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

races. True it is that in some of them visions 
are vouchsafed us of the highest truths of reli- 
gion, of the very substance of the gospel of the 
Son of God. But when we take the sacred 
books of the other religions in their entirety, and 
compare them with the sacred writings of the 
Hebrews, the superiority of these in their funda- 
mental ideas, in the conceptions that dominate 
them, in the grand uplifting visions and purposes 
that vitalize them, can be felt by any man who 
has any discernment of spiritual realities. It is 
in these great ideas that the value of these writ- 
ings consists, and not in any petty infallibility of 
phrase, or inerrancy of statement. They are the 
record, as no other book in the world is a record, 
of that increasing purpose of God which runs 
through the ages. 

I hope that it will appear as the result of our 
studies, that one may continue to reverence the 
Scriptures as containing a unique and special rev- 
elation from God to men, and yet clearly see and 
frankly acknowledge the facts concerning their 
origin, and the human and fallible elements in 
them, which are not concealed, but lie upon their 
very face. 



CHAPTER II. 

WHAT DID MOSES WRITE ? 

We are now to study the first five books of 
the Bible, known as the^ Pentateuch. This word 
" Pentateuch " is not in the Bible ; it is a Greek 
word signifying literally the Five-fold Work ; 
from penta, five, and teuchos, which in the later 
Greek means roll or volume. 

The Jews in the time of our Lord always con- 
sidered these five books as one connected work ; 
they called the whole sometimes "Torah," or 
"The Law," sometimes "The Law of Moses," 
sometimes "The Five-fifths of the Law." It 
was originally one book, and it is not easy to de- 
termine at what time its division into five parts 
took place. 

Later criticism is also inclined to add to the 
Pentateuch the Book of Joshua, and to say that 
the first six books of the Bible were put into their 
present form by the same hand. "The Hexa- 
teuch," or Six-fold Work, has taken the place in 
these later discussions of the Pentateuch, or Five- 
fold Work. Doubtless there is good reason for 
the new classification, but it will be more con- 
venient to begin with the traditional division and 



1 8 WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

speak first of the five books reckoned by the later 
Jews as the " Torah," or the Five-fifths of the 
Law. 

Who wrote these books ? Our modern Hebrew 
Bibles give them the general title, " Quinque 
Libri Mosis." This means "The Five Books of 
Moses." But Moses could never have given them 
this title, for these are Latin words, and it is not 
possible that Moses should have used the Latin 
language because there was no Latin language 
in the world until many hundreds of years after 
the day of Moses. The Latin title was given to 
them, of course, by the editors who compiled 
them. The preface and the explanatory notes in 
these Hebrew Bibles are also written in Latin. 

But over this Latin title in the Hebrew Bible 
is the Hebrew word " Torah." This was the 
name by which these books were chiefly known 
among the Jews ;. it signifies simply "The Law." 
This title gives us no information, then, concern- 
ing the authorship of these books. 

When we look at our English Bibles we find 
no separation, as in the Hebrew Bible, of these 
five books from the rest of the Old Testament 
writings, but we find over each one of them a 
title by which it is ascribed to Moses as its au- 
thor, — " The First Book of Moses, commonly 
called Genesis;" "The Second Book of Moses, 
commonly called Exodus ; " and so on. But when 
I look into my Hebrew Bible again no such title 
is there. Nothing is said about Moses in the 
Hebrew title to Genesis. 



WHAT DID MOSES WRITE? 1 9 

It is certain that if Moses wrote these books 
he did not call them " Genesis,'* " Exodus," 
" Leviticus," " Numbers," " Deuteronomy ; " for 
these words, again, come from languages that he 
never heard. Four of them are Greek words, and 
one of them, Numbers, is a Latin word. These 
names were given to the several books at a very 
late day. What are their names in the Hebrew 
Bible ? Each of them is called by the first word, 
or some of the first words in the book. The Jews 
were apt to name their books, as we name our 
hymns, by the initial word or words ; thus they 
called the first of these five books, "Bereshith," 
"In the Beginning;" the second one "Veelleh 
Shemoth," "Now these are the names;" the 
third one " Va-yikra," " And he called," and so on. 
The titles in our English Bible are much more 
significant and appropriate than these original 
Hebrew titles ; thus Genesis signifies origin, and 
Genesis is the Book of Origins ; Exodus means 
departure, and the book describes the departure 
of Israel from Egypt ; Leviticus points out the 
fact that the book is mainly occupied with the 
Levitical legislation ; Numbers gives a history of 
the numbering of the people, and Deuteronomy, 
which means the second law, contains what seems 
to be a recapitulation and reenactment of the 
legislation of the preceding books. But these 
English titles, which are partly translated and 
partly transferred to English from older Latin and 
Greek titles, tell us nothing trustworthy about 
the authorship of the books. 



20 WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

How, then, you desire to know, did these books 
come to be known as the books of Moses ? 

"They were quoted," answer some, "and thus 
accredited by our Lord and his apostles. They 
are frequently mentioned in the New Testament 
as inspired and authoritative books ; they are re- 
ferred to as the writings of Moses ; we have the 
testimony of Jesus Christ and of his apostles to 
their genuineness and authenticity." Let us see 
how much truth this answer contains. It con- 
fronts us with a very important matter which 
may as well be settled before we go on. 

It is true, to begin with, that Jesus and the 
Evangelists do quote from these books, and that 
they ascribe to Moses some of the passages which 
they quote. The soundest criticism cannot im- 
pugn the honesty or the intelligence of such quo- 
tations. There is good reason, as we shall see, 
for believing that a large part of this literature 
was written in the time of Moses, and under the 
eye of Moses, if not by his hand. In a certain 
important sense, which will be clearer to us as 
we go on, this literature is all Mosaic. The ref- 
erence to it by the Lord and his apostles is there- 
fore legitimate. 

But this reference does by no means warrant 
the sweeping conclusion that the five books of 
the law were all and entire from the pen of the 
Lawgiver. Our Lord nowhere says that the first 
five books of the Old Testament were all written 
by Moses. Much less does he teach that the con- 



WHAT DID MOSES WRITE? 21 

tents of these books are all equally inspired and 
authoritative. Indeed he quotes from them sev- 
eral times for the express purpose of repudiating 
their doctrines and repealing their legislation. In 
the very fore-front of his teaching stands a stern 
array of judgments in which undoubted command- 
ments of the Mosaic law are expressly condemned 
and set aside, some of them because they are 
inadequate and superficial, some of them be- 
cause they are morally defective. " Ye have 
heard that it was said to them of old time " thus 
and thus ; " but I say unto you " — and then fol- 
low words that directly contradict the old legis- 
lation. After quoting two of the commandments 
of the Decalogue and giving them an interpreta- 
tion that wholly transforms them, he proceeds to 
cite several old laws from these Mosaic books, in 
order to set his own word firmly against them. 
One of these also is a law of the Decalogue itself. 
There can be little doubt that the third com- 
mandment is quoted and criticised by our Lord, 
in this discourse. That commandment forbids, 
not chiefly profanity, but perjury ; by implication 
it permits judicial oaths. And Jesus expressly 
forbids judicial oaths. " Swear not at all." I am 
aware that this is not the usual interpretation of 
these words, but I believe that it is the only mean- 
ing that the words will bear. Not to insist upon 
this, however, several other examples are given 
in the discourse concerning which there can be 
no question. 



22 WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

Jesus quotes the law of divorce from Deuter- 
onomy xxi v. i, 2. "When a man taketh a wife 
and marrieth her, then it shall be, if she find no 
favor in his eyes, because he hath found some un- 
seemly thing in her, that he shall give her a bill 
of divorcement and send her out of his house. 
And when she is departed out of his house she 
may go and be another man's wife." These are 
the words of a law which Moses is represented as 
uttering by the authority of Jehovah. This law, 
as thus expressed, Jesus Christ unqualifiedly re- 
peals. " I say unto you that every one that put- 
teth away his wife, saving for the cause of forni- 
cation, maketh her an adulteress, and whosoever 
shall marry her when she is put away committeth 
adultery." 

The law of revenge is treated in the same way. 
" Ye have heard that it was said, An eye for an 
eye and a tooth for a tooth." Who said this ? 
Was it some rabbin of the olden time ? It was 
Moses ; nay, the old record says that this is the 
word of the Lord by Moses : " The Lord spake 
unto Moses, saying [among other things], If a 
man cause a blemish in his neighbor, as he hath 
done so shall it be done to him ; breach for breach, 
eye for eye, tooth for tooth ; as he hath caused a 
blemish in a man, so shall it be rendered unto 
him." (Lev. xxiv. 19, 20.) So in Exodus xxi. 24, 
" Thou shalt give life for life, eye for eye, tooth 
for tooth, hand for hand, burning for burning, 
wound for wound, stripe for stripe." It is some- 



WHAT DID MOSES WRITE? 2$ 

times said that these retaliations were simply per- 
mitted under the Mosaic law, but this is a great 
error ; they were enjoined : " Thine eye shall not 
pity/' it is said in another place (Deut. xix. 21) ; 
" life shall go for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, 
hand for hand, foot for foot." This law of retalia- 
tion is an integral part of the moral legislation of 
the Pentateuch. It is no part of the ceremonial 
law ; it is an ethical rule. It is clearly ascribed 
to Moses ; it is distinctly said to have been en- 
acted by command of God. But Christ in the 
most unhesitating manner condemns and counter- 
mands it. 

" Ye have heard," he continues, " that it was 
said, Thou shalt love thy neighbor and hate thine 
enemy ; but I say unto you, Love your enemies, 
and pray for them that persecute you." " But 
this," it is objected, " is not a quotation from the 
Old Testament. These words do not occur in 
that old legislation." At any rate Jesus intro- 
duces them with the very same formula which he 
has all along been applying to the words which 
he has quoted from the Mosaic law. It is evi- 
dent that he means to give the impression that 
they are part of that law. He is not careful in 
any of these cases to quote the exact words of 
the law, but he does give the meaning of it. He 
gives the exact meaning of it here. The Mosaic 
law commanded Jews to love their neighbors, 
members of their own tribe, but to hate the peo- 
ple of surrounding tribes : " An Ammonite or a 



24 WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

Moabite shall not enter into the assembly of the 
Lord ; even to the tenth generation shall none 
belonging to them enter into the assembly of the 
Lord for ever. . . . Thou shalt not seek their 
peace nor their prosperity all thy days for ever." 
(Deut. xxiii. 3-6.) 

" When the Lord thy God shall bring thee into 
the land whither thou goest to possess it, and 
shalt cast out many nations before thee, . . . 
then thou shalt utterly destroy them ; thou shalt 
make no covenant with them, nor show mercy 
unto them." (Deut. vii. 1, 2.) This is the spirit 
of much of this ancient legislation ; and these 
laws were, if the record is true, literally executed, 
in after times, by Joshua and Samuel, upon the 
people of Canaan. And these bloody commands, 
albeit they have a "Thus said the Lord" behind 
every one of them, Jesus, in the great discourse 
which is the charter of his kingdom, distinctly 
repeals. 

Such is the method by which our Lord some- 
times deals with the Old Testament. It is by no 
means true that he assumes this attitude toward 
all parts of it. Sometimes he quotes Lawgiver 
and Prophets in confirmation of his own words ; 
often he refers to these ancient Scriptures as 
preparing the way for his kingdom and foreshad- 
owing his person and his work. Nay, he even 
says of that law which we are now studying that 
not one jot or tittle shall in any wise pass from it 
till all things be accomplished. What he means 



WHAT DID MOSES WRITE? 2$ 

by that we shall be able by and by to discover. 
But these passages which I have cited make it 
clear that Jesus Christ cannot be appealed to in 
support of the traditional view of the nature of 
these old writings. 

The common argument by which Christ is 
made a witness to the authenticity and infallible 
authority of the Old Testament runs as follows : 

Christ quotes Moses as the author of this leg- 
islation ; therefore Moses must have written the 
whole Pentateuch. 

Moses was an inspired prophet ; therefore all 
the teaching of the Pentateuch must be infallible. 

The facts are, that Jesus nowhere testifies that 
Moses wrote the whole of the Pentateuch ; and 
that he nowhere guarantees the infallibility either 
of Moses or of the took. On the contrary, he 
sets aside as inadequate or morally defective cer- 
tain laws which in this book are ascribed to 
Moses. 

It is needful, thus, on the threshold of our ar- 
gument, to have a clear understanding respecting 
the nature of the testimony borne by our Lord 
and his apostles to this ancient literature. It is 
upon this that the advocates of the traditional 
view of the Old Testament wholly rely. " Christ 
was authority,'* they say ; " the New Testament 
writers were inspired ; you all admit this ; now 
Christ and the New Testament writers con- 
stantly quote the Scriptures of the Old Testa- 
ment as inspired and as authoritative. Therefore 



26 WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

they must be the infallible word of God." To 
this it is sufficient to reply, Christ and the apos- 
tles do quote the Old Testament Scriptures ; they 
find a great treasure of inspired and inspiring 
truth in them, and so can we ; they recognize the 
fact that they are organically related to that king- 
dom which Christ came to found, and that they 
record the earlier stages of that great course of 
revelation which culminates in Christ ; but they 
nowhere pronounce any of these writings free 
from error ; there is not a hint or suggestion 
anywhere in the New Testament that any of the 
writings of the Old Testament are infallible ; and 
Christ himself, as we have seen, clearly warns his 
disciples that they do not even furnish a safe rule 
of moral conduct. After this, the attempt to 
prove the inerrancy of the Old Testament by 
summoning as witnesses the writers of the New 
Testament may as well be abandoned. 

But did not Jesus say, " Search the Scriptures, 
for in them ye think ye have eternal life, and they 
are they that testify of me ? " Well, if he had 
said that, it would not prove that the Scriptures 
they searched were errorless. The injunction 
would have all the force to-day that it ever had. 
One may very profitably study documents which 
are far from infallible. This was not, however, 
what our Lord said. If you will look into your 
Revised Version you will see that his words, ad- 
dressed to the Jews, are not a command but an 
assertion : " Ye search the Scriptures, for in them 



WHAT DID MOSES WRITE? 27 

ye think ye have eternal life" (John v. 39); if 
you searched them carefully you would find some 
testimony there concerning me. It is not an in- 
junction to search the Scriptures ; it is simply 
the statement of the fact that the Jews to whom 
he was speaking did search the Scriptures, and 
searched them as many people in our own time 
do, to very little purpose. 

But does not Paul say, in his letter to Timothy, 
that "All Scripture is given by inspiration of 
God ? " No, Paul does not say that. Look again 
at your Revised Version (2 Tim. iii. 16) : "Every 
Scripture inspired of God is also profitable for 
teaching, for reproof, for correction, for instruc- 
tion, which is in righteousness." Every writing 
inspired of God is profitable reading. That is the 
whole statement. 

But Paul says in the verses preceding, that 
Timothy had known from a child the Sacred 
Writings which were able to make him wise unto 
salvation through faith in Jesus Christ. Was 
there not, then, in his hands, a volume or collec- 
tion of books, known as the Sacred Writings, 
with a definite table of contents ; and did not Paul 
refer to this collection, and imply that all these 
writings were inspired of God and profitable for 
the uses specified ? 

No, this is not the precise state of the case. 
These Sacred Writings had not at this time been 
gathered into a volume by themselves, with a 
fixed table of contents. What is called the Canon 



28 WHO WROTE THE BIBLE ? 

of the Old Testament had not yet been finally 
determined. 1 There were, indeed, as we saw in 
the last chapter, two collections of sacred writ- 
ings, one in Hebrew and the other in Greek. 
The Hebrew collection was not at this time defi- 
nitely closed ; there was still a dispute among the 
Palestinian Jews as to whether two or three of 
the books which it now contains should go into 
it ; that dispute was not concluded until half a 
century after the death of our Lord. The other 
collection, as I have said, was in the Greek lan- 
guage, and it included, not only our Old Testa- 
ment books, but the books now known as the Old 
Testament Apocrypha. This was the collection, 
remember, most used by our Lord and his apos- 
tles. Which of these collections was in the 
hands of Timothy we do not certainly know. But 
the father of Timothy was a Greek, though his 
mother was a Jewess ; and it is altogether prob- 
able that he had studied from his childhood the 
Greek version of the Old Testament writings. 
Shall we understand Paul, then, as certifying the 
authenticity and infallibility of this whole collec- 
tion ? Does he mean to say that the " Story of 
Susanna" and " Bel and the Dragon," and all 
the rest of these fables and tales, are profitable 
for teaching and instruction in righteousness? 
This text, so interpreted, evidently proves too 
much. Doubtless Paul did mean to commend to 
Timothy the Old Testament Scriptures as con- 

1 See chapter xi. 



WHA T DID MOSES WRITE ? 29 

taming precious and saving truth. But we must 
not force his language into any wholesale in- 
dorsement of every letter and word, or even of 
every chapter and book of these old writings. 

So far, therefore, as our Lord himself and his 
apostles are concerned, we have no decisive judg- 
ment either as to the authorship of these old 
writings or as to their absolute freedom from er- 
ror. They handled these Scriptures, quoted from 
them, found inspired teaching in them ; but the 
Scriptures which they chiefly handled, from which 
they generally quoted, in which they found their 
inspired teaching, contained, as we know, worth- 
less matter. It is not to be assumed that they 
did not know this matter to be worthless ; and if 
they knew this, it is not to be asserted that they 
intended to place upon the whole of it the stamp 
of their approval. 

We have wandered somewhat from the path of 
our discussion, but it was necessary in order to 
determine the significance of those references to 
the Old Testament with which the New Testa- 
ment abounds. The question before us is, Why 
do we believe that Moses wrote the five books 
which bear his name in our Bibles ? We have 
seen that the New Testament writers give us no 
decisive testimony on this point. On what testi- 
mony is the belief founded ? 

Doubtless it rests wholly on the traditions of 
the Jews. Such was the tradition preserved 
among them in the time of our Lord. They be- 



30 WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

lieved that Moses wrote every word of these 
books ; that God dictated the syllables to him 
and that he recorded them. But the traditions 
of the Jews are not, in other matters, highly re- 
garded by Christians. Our Lord himself speaks 
more than once in stern censure of these tradi- 
tions by which, as he charges, their moral sense 
was blunted and the law of God was made of 
none effect. Many of these old tales of theirs 
were extremely childish. One tradition ascribes, 
as we have seen, to Moses the authorship of the 
whole Pentateuch ; another declares that when, 
during an invasion of the Chaldeans, all the books 
of the Scripture were destroyed by fire, Ezra 
wrote them all out from memory, in an incred- 
ibly short space of time ; another tradition relates 
how the same Ezra one day heard a divine voice 
bidding him retire into the field with five swift 
amanuenses, — " how he then received a full cup, 
full as it were of water, but the color of it was 
like fire, . . . and when he had drank of it, his 
heart uttered understanding and wisdom grew in 
his breast, for his spirit strengthened his mem- 
ory, . . . and his mouth was opened and shut no 
more and for forty days and nights he dictated 
without stopping till two hundred and four books 
were written down." 1 These fables had wide 
currency among the Jews ; they were believed by 
Irenaeus, Tertullian, Augustine, and others of the 
great fathers of the Christian Church ; but they 
1 2 Esdras xiv. See, also, Stanley's Jezvish Church, iii. 151. 



WHAT DID MOSES WRITE? 3 1 

are not credited in these days. It is evident that 
Jewish tradition is not always to be trusted. We 
shall need some better reason than this for be- 
lieving that Moses was the author of the Penta- 
teuch. 

I do not know where else we can go for infor- 
mation except to the books themselves. A care- 
ful examination of them may throw some light 
upon the question of their origin. A great mul- 
titude of scholars have been before us in their 
examination ; what is their verdict ? 

First we have the verdict of the traditionalists, 
— those, I mean, who accept the Jewish tradi- 
tion, and believe with the rabbins that Moses 
wrote the whole of the first five books of the 
Bible. Some who hold this theory are ready to 
admit that there may be a few verses here and 
there interpolated into the record by later 
scribes ; but they maintain that the books in 
their substance and entirety came in their pres- 
ent form from the hands of Moses. This is the 
theory which has been generally received by the 
Christian church. It is held to-day by very few 
eminent Christian scholars. 

Over against this traditional theory is the the- 
ory of the radical and destructive critics that 
Moses wrote nothing at all ; that perhaps the ten 
commandments were given by him, but hardly 
anything more ; that these books were not even 
written in the time of Moses, but hundreds of 
years after his death. Moses is supposed to have 



32 WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

lived about 1400 b. c. ; these writings, say the 
destructive critics, were first produced in part 
about 730 b. c, but were mainly written after 
the Exile (about 444 b. a), almost a thousand 
years after the death of Moses. " Strict and im- 
partial investigation has shown," says Dr. Knap- 
pert, "that . . . nothing in the whole Law really 
comes from Moses himself except the ten com- 
mandments. And even these were not delivered 
by him in the same form as we find them now." x 
This is, to my mind, an astounding statement. 
It illustrates the lengths to which destructive 
criticism can go. And I dare say that we shall 
find in our study of these books reason for believ- 
ing that such views as these are as far astray on 
the one side as those of the traditionalists are on 
the other. 

Let us test these two theories by interrogating 
the books themselves. 

First, then, we find upon the face of the record 
several reasons for believing that the books can- 
not have come, in their present form, from the 
hand of Moses. 

Moses died in the wilderness, before the Israel- 
ites reached the Promised Land, before the Ca- 
naanites were driven out, and the land was divided 
among the tribes. 

It is not likely that he wrote the account of his 
own death and burial which we find in the last 
chapter of Deuteronomy. There are those, it is 

1 The Religion of Israel \ p. 9. 



WHAT DID MOSES WRITE? 33 

true, who assert that Moses was inspired to write 
this account of his own funeral ; but this is going 
a little farther than the rabbins ; they declare 
that this chapter was added by Joshua. It is 
conceivable that Moses might have left on record 
a prediction that he would die and be buried in 
this way ; but the Spirit of the Lord could never 
inspire a man to put in the past tense a plain 
narrative of an event which is yet in the future. 
The statement when written would be false, and 
God is not the author of falsehood. 

It is not likely either that Moses wrote the 
words in Exodus xi. 3 : " Moreover the man 
Moses was very great in the land of Egypt, in 
the sight of all the people ; " nor those in Num- 
bers xii. 3 : " Now the man Moses was very meek 
above all the men which were on the face of the 
earth." It has been said, indeed, that Moses 
was directed by inspiration to say such things 
about himself ; but I do not believe that egotism 
is a supernatural product ; men take that in the 
natural way. 

Other passages show upon the face of them 
that they must have been added to these books 
after the time of Moses. It is stated in Exodus 
xvi. 35, that the Israelites continued to eat manna 
until they came to the borders of the land of Ca- 
naan. But Moses was not living when they en- 
tered that land. 

In Genesis xii. 6, in connection with the story 
of Abraham's entrance into Palestine, the histor- 



34 WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

ical explanation is thrown in : " And the Canaan- 
ite was then in the land." It would seem that 
this must have been written at a day when the 
Canaanite was no longer in the land, — after the 
occupation of the land and the expulsion of the 
Canaanites. In Numbers xv. 32, an incident is 
related which is prefaced by the words, " While 
the children of Israel were in the wilderness." 
Does not this look back to a past time ? Can we 
imagine that this was written by Moses ? Again, 
in Deuteronomy iii. 11, we have a description of 
the bedstead of Og, one of the giants captured 
and killed by the Israelites, just before the death 
of Moses ; and this bedstead is referred to as if 
it were an antique curiosity ; the village is men- 
tioned in which it is kept. In Genesis xxxvi. we 
find a genealogy of the kings of Moab, running 
through several generations, prefaced with the 
words : "These are the kings that reigned in the 
land of Edom before there reigned any king over 
the children of Israel." This is looking back- 
ward from a day when kings were reigning over 
the children of Israel. How could it have been 
written five hundred years before there ever was 
a king in Israel ? In Genesis xiv. 14, we read of 
the city of Dan ; but in Judges xviii. 29, we are 
told that this city did not receive its name until 
hundreds of years later, long after the time of 
Moses. Similarly the account of the naming of 
the villages of Jair, which we find in Deuteronomy 
iii. 14, is quite inconsistent with another account 



WHAT DID MOSES WRITE? 35 

in Judges x. 3, 4. One of them must be errone- 
ous, and it is probable that the passage in Deu- 
teronomy is an anachronism. 

Most of these passages could be explained by 
the admission that the scribes in later years 
added sentences here and there by way of inter- 
pretation. But that admission would of course 
discredit the infallibility of the books. Other 
difficulties, however, of a much more serious 
kind, present themselves. 

In the first verse of the twentieth chapter of 
Numbers we read that the people came to Kadesh 
in the first month. The first month of what 
year ? We look back, and the first note of time 
previous to this is the second month of the sec- 
ond year of the wandering in the wilderness. 
Their arrival at Kadesh described in the twen- 
tieth chapter would seem, then, to have been in 
the first month of the third year. In the twenty- 
second verse of this chapter the camp moves on 
to Mount Hor, and Aaron dies there. There is 
no note of any interval of time whatever ; yet we 
are told in the thirty-third chapter of this book 
that Aaron died in the fortieth year of the wan- 
dering. Here is a skip of thirty-eight years in 
the history, without an indication of anything 
having happened meantime. On the supposition 
that this is a continuous history written by the 
man who was a chief actor in it, such a gap is 
inexplicable. There is a reasonable way of ac- 
counting for it, as we shall see, but it cannot be 



36 WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

accounted for on the theory that the book in its 
present form came from the hand of Moses. 

Some of the laws also bear internal evidence 
of having originated at a later day than that of 
Moses. The law forbidding the removal of land- 
marks presupposes a long occupation of the land ; 
and the law regulating military enlistments is 
more naturally explained on the theory that it 
was framed in the settled period of the Hebrew 
history, and not during the wanderings. This 
may, indeed, have been anticipatory legislation, 
but the explanation is not probable. 

Various repetitions of laws occur which are in- 
explicable on the supposition that these laws were 
all written by the hand of one person. Thus in 
Exodus xxxiv. 17-26, there is a collection of legal 
enactments, all of which can be found, 'in the 
same order and almost the same words, in the 
twenty-third chapter of the same book. Thus, 
to quote the summary of Bleek, we find in both 
places, (a) that all the males shall appear before 
Jehovah three times in every year ; (b) that no 
leavened bread shall be used at the killing of the 
Paschal Lamb, and that the fat shall be preserved 
until the next morning ; (c) that the first of the 
fruits of the field shall be brought into the house 
of the Lord ; (d) that the young kid shall not be 
seethed in its mother's milk. 1 

We cannot imagine that one man, with a fairly 
good memory, much less an infallibly inspired 

1 Introduction to the Old Testament, i. 240. 



WHAT DID MOSES WRITE? 37 

man, should have written these laws twice over, 
in the same words, within so small a space, in 
the same legal document. In Leviticus we have 
a similar instance. If any one will take that book 
and carefully compare the eighteenth with the 
twentieth chapter, he will see some reason for 
doubting that both chapters could have been in- 
serted by one hand in this collection of statutes. 
"It is not probable," as Bleek has said, "that 
Moses would have written the two chapters one 
after the other, and would so shortly after have 
repeated the same precepts which he had before 
given, only not so well arranged the second 
time. ,,1 

There are also quite a number of inconsisten- 
cies and contradictions in the legislation, all of 
which may be easily explained, but not on the 
theory that the laws all came from the pen of one 
infallibly inspired lawgiver. We find also sev- 
eral historical repetitions and historical discrep- 
ancies, all of which make against the theory that 
Moses is the author of all this Pentateuchal litera- 
ture. A single author, if he were a man of fair 
intelligence, good common sense, and reasonably 
firm memory, could not have written it. And 
unless tautology, anachronisms, and contradic- 
tions are a proof of inspiration, much less could 
it have been written by a single inspired writer. 
The traditional theory cannot therefore be true. 
We have appealed to the books themselves, and 
they bear swift witness against it. 

1 Introduction to the Old Testament, i. 240. 



38 WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

Now let us look at the other theory of the de- 
structive critics which not only denies that Moses 
wrote any portion of the Pentateuch, but alleges 
that it was written in Palestine, none of it less 
than six or seven hundred years after he was 
dead and buried. 

In the first place the book expressly declares 
that Moses wrote certain portions of it. He is 
mentioned several times as having written cer- 
tain historical records and certain words of the 
law. In Exodus xxiv., we are told that Moses 
not only rehearsed to the people the Covenant 
which the Lord had made with them, but that he 
wrote all the words of the Covenant in a book, 
and that he took the book of the Covenant and 
read it in the audience of all the people. After 
the idolatry of the people Moses was again com- 
manded to write these words, " and " it is added, 
" he wrote upon the tables the words of the Cove- 
nant, the ten commandments." In Exodus xvii. 
14, we are told that Moses wrote the narrative of 
the defeat of Amalek in a book ; and again in 
Numbers xxxiii. 21, we read that Moses recorded 
the various marches and halts of the Israelites in 
the wilderness. We have also in the Book of 
Deuteronomy (xxxi. 24-26) a statement that 
Moses wrote " the words of the law " in a book, 
and put it in the ark of the covenant for preser- 
vation. Precisely how much of the law this state- 
ment is meant to cover is not clear. Some have 
interpreted it to cover the whole Pentateuch, but 



WHA T DID MOSES WRITE ? 39 

that interpretation, as we have seen, is inadmis- 
sible. We may concede that it does refer to a 
body or code of laws, — probably that body or 
code on which the legislation of Deuteronomy is 
based. 

These are all the statements made in the writ- 
ings themselves concerning their origin. They 
prove, if they are credible, that portions of these 
books were written by Moses ; they do not prove 
that the whole of them came from his hand. 

I see no reason whatever to doubt that this is 
the essential fact. The theory of the destructive 
critics that this literature and this legislation was 
all produced in Palestine, about the eighth cen- 
tury before Christ, and palmed off upon the Jews 
as a pious fraud, does not bear investigation. In 
large portions of these laws we are constantly 
meeting with legal provisions and historical allu- 
sions that take us directly back to the time of 
the wandering in the wilderness, and cannot be 
explained on any other theory. " When," says 
Bleek, " we meet with laws which refer in their 
whole tenor to a state of things utterly unknown 
in the period subsequent to Moses, and to cir- 
cumstances existing in the Mosaic age, and in 
that only, it is in the highest degree likely that 
these laws not only in their essential purport 
proceeded from Moses, but also that they were 
written down by Moses or at least in the Mosaic 
age. Of these laws which appear to carry with 
them such clear and exact traces of the Mosaic 



40 WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

age, there are many occurring, especially in Le- 
viticus, and also in Numbers and Exodus, which 
laws relate to situations and surrounding circum- 
stances only existing whilst the people, as was 
the case in Moses* time, wandered in the wil- 
derness and were dwellers in the close confine- 
ment of camps and tents/ 5 1 It is not necessary 
to draw out this evidence at length ; I will only 
refer to a few out of scores of instances. The 
first seven chapters of Leviticus, containing laws 
regulating the burnt offerings and meat offerings, 
constantly assume that the people are in the 
camp and in the wilderness. The refuse of the 
beasts offered in sacrifice was to be carried out 
of the camp to the public ash heap, and burned. 
The law of the Great Day of Atonement (Lev. 
xvi.) is also full of allusions to the fact that the 
people were in camp ; the scapegoat was to be 
driven into the wilderness, and the man who 
drove it out was to wash his clothes and bathe, 
and afterward come into the camp ; the bullock 
and the goat, slain for the sacrifice, were to be 
carried forth without the camp ; he who bears 
them forth must also wash himself before he re- 
turns to the camp. Large parts of the legisla- 
tion concerning leprosy are full of the same inci- 
dental references to the fact that the people were 
dwelling in camp. 

There are also laws requiring that all the ani- 
mals killed for food should be slaughtered before 

1 Vol. i. p. 212. 



WHAT DID MOSES WRITE? 41 

the door of the Tabernacle. There was a reason 
for this law ; it was intended to guard against a 
debasing superstition ; but how would it have 
been possible to obey it when the people were 
scattered all over the land of Palestine. It was 
adapted only to the time when they were dwell- 
ing in a camp in the wilderness. 

Besides, it must not be overlooked that in all 
this legislation " the priests are not at all referred 
to in general, but by name, as Aaron and his 
sons, or the sons of Aaron the priests." 

All the legislation respecting the construction 
of the tabernacle, the disposition of it in the 
camp, the transportation of it from place to place 
in the wilderness, the order of the march, the 
summoning of the people when camp was to be 
broken, with all its minute and circumstantial di- 
rections, would be destitute of meaning if it had 
been written while the people were living in Pal- 
estine, scattered all over the land, dwelling in 
their own houses, and engaged in agricultural 
pursuits. 

The simple, unforced, natural interpretation of 
these laws takes us back, I say, to the time of 
Moses, to the years of the wandering in the wil- 
derness. The incidental references to the condi- 
tions of the wilderness life are far more convin- 
cing than any explicit statement would have been. 
Can any one conceive that a writer of laws, living 
in Palestine hundreds of years afterwards, could 
have fabricated these allusions to the camp life 



42 WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

and the tent life of the people ? Such a novel- 
ist did not exist among them ; and I question 
whether Professor Kuenen and Professor Well- 
hausen, with all their wealth of imagination, could 
have done any such thing. (Many of these laws 
were certainly written in the time of Moses ; and 
I do not believe that any man was living in the 
time of Moses who was more competent to write 
such laws than was Moses himself. The conclu- 
sion of Bleek seems therefore to me altogether 
reasonable : " Although the Pentateuch in its 
present state and extent may not have been com- 
posed by Moses, and also many of the single laws 
therein may* be the product of a lat l age, still 
the legislation contained in it is genuinely Mo- 
saic in its entire spirit and character/ ' 1 We 
are brought, therefore, in our study, to these in- 
evitable conclusions : 

i. The Pentateuch could never have been writ- 
ten by any one man, inspired or otherwise. 

2. It is a composite work, in which many hands 
have been engaged. The production of it ex- 
tends over many centuries. 

3. It contains writings which are as old as the 
time of Moses, and some that are much older. 
It is impossible to tell how much of it came from 
the hand of Moses, but there are considerable 
portions of it which, although they may have 
been somewhat modified by later editors, are sub- 
stantially as he left them. 

1 Vol. i. p. 221. 



WHA T DID MOSES WRITE ? 43 

I have said that the Pentateuch is a composite 
work. In the next chapter we shall find some 
curious facts concerning its component parts, and 
the way in which they have been put together. 
And although it did not come into being in the 
way in which we have been taught by the tradi- 
tions of the rabbins, yet we shall see that it con- 
tains some wonderful evidence of the superin- 
tending care of God, — of that continuous and 
growing manifestation of his truth and his love 
to the people of Israel, which is what we mean 
by revelation. 

Revelation, we shall be able to understand, is 
not the diJTation by God of words to men that 
they may be written down in books ; it is rather 
the disclosure of the truth and love of God to 
men in the processes of history, in the develop- 
ment of the moral order of the world. v It is the 
Light that lighteth every man, shining in the 
paths that lead to righteousness and life. There 
is a moral leadership of God in history ; revela- 
tion is the record of that leadership. It is by no 
means confined to words ; its most impressive 
disclosures are in the field of action. " Thus did 
the Lord," as Dr. Bruce has said, is a more per- 
fect formula of revelation than " Thus said the 
Lord." It is in that great historical movement 
of which the Bible is the record that we find the 
revelation of God to men. 



CHAPTER III. 

SOURCES OF THE PENTATEUCH. 

In the last chapter we found evidence that the 
Pentateuch as it stands could not have been the 
work of Moses, though it contains much material 
which must have originated in the time of Moses, 
and is more likely to have been dictated by him 
than by any one else ; that large portions of the 
Mosaic law were of Mosaic authorship ; that the 
entire system of Levitical legislation grew up 
from this Mosaic germ, though much of it ap- 
peared in later generations ; and that, therefore, 
the habit of the Jews of calling it all the law of 
Moses is easily understood. We thus discovered 
in this study that the Pentateuch is a composite 
book. 

The Christian Church in all the ages has been 
inclined to pin its faith to what the rabbins said 
about the origin of this book, and this is not alto- 
gether surprising ; but in these days when testi- 
mony is sifted by criticism we find that the tradi- 
tions of the rabbins are not at all trustworthy ; 
and when we go to the Book itself, and ask it to 
tell us what it can of the secret of its origin, we 
find that it has a very different story to tell from 



SOURCES OF THE PENTATEUCH. 45 

that with which the rabbins have beguiled us. 
A careful study of the Book makes it perfectly- 
certain that it is not the production of any one 
man, but a growth that has been going on for 
many centuries ; that it embodies the work of 
many hands, put together in an artless way by 
various editors and compilers. The framework 
is Mosaic, but the details of the work were added 
by reverent disciples of Moses, the last of whom 
must have lived and written many hundred years 
after Moses's day. 

Some of the evidences of composite structure 
which lie upon the very face of the narrative will 
now come under our notice. It is plain that the 
whole of this literature could not have been writ- 
ten by any one man without some kind of assist- 
ance. All the books, except the first, are indeed 
a record of events which occurred mainly during 
the lifetime of Moses, and of most of which he 
might have had personal knowledge. But the 
story of Genesis goes back to a remote antiquity. 
The last event related in that book occurred four 
hundred years before Moses was born ; it was as 
distant from him as the discovery of America by 
Columbus is from us ; and other portions of the 
narrative, such as the story of the Flood and the 
Creation, stretch back into the shadows of the 
age which precedes history. Neither Moses nor 
any one living in his day could have given us 
these reports from his own knowledge. Whoever 
wrote this must have obtained his materials in 
one of three ways. 



46 WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

1. They might have been given to him by di- 
rect revelation from God. 

2. He might have gathered them up from oral 
tradition, from stories, folk-lore, transmitted from 
mouth to mouth, and so preserved from genera- 
tion to generation. 

3. He might have found them in written docu- 
ments existing at the time of his writing. 

The first of these conjectures embodies the 
rabbinical theory. The later form of that the- 
ory declared, however, that God did not even dic- 
tate while Moses wrote, but simply handed the 
law, all written and punctuated, out of heaven to 
Moses ; the only question with these rabbins 
was whether he handed it down all at once, or 
one volume at a time. It is certain that this is 
not the correct theory. The repetitions, the dis- 
crepancies, the anachronisms, and the errors 
which the writing certainly contains prove that it 
could not have been dictated, word for word, by 
the Omniscient One. Those who maintain such 
a theory as this should beware how they ascribe 
to God the imperfections of men. It seems to 
me that the advocacy of the verbal theory of in- 
spiration comes perilously near to the sin against 
the Holy Ghost. 

The second conjecture, that the writer of these 
books might have gathered up oral traditions of 
the earlier generations and incorporated them 
into his writings, is more plausible ; yet a careful 
examination of the writings themselves does not 



SOURCES OF THE PENTATEUCH. 47 

confirm this theory. The form of this literature 
shows that it must have had another origin. 

The only remaining conjecture, that the books 
are compilations of written documents, has been 
established beyond controversy by the most pa- 
tient study of the writings themselves. In the 
Book of Genesis the evidence of the combination 
of two documents is so obvious that he who runs 
may read. These two documents are distin- 
guished from each other, partly by the style of 
writing, and partly by the different names which 
they apply to the Supreme Being. One of these 
old writers called the Deity Elohim, the other 
called him Yahveh, or Jehovah. These docu- 
ments are known, therefore, as the Elohistic and 
the Jehovistic narratives. Sometimes it is a lit- 
tle difficult to tell where the line runs which sep- 
arates these narratives, but usually it is distinct. 
Readers of Genesis find many passages in which 
the name given to the Deity is " God," and oth- 
ers in which it is "Lord," in small capitals. The 
first of these names represents the Hebrew Elo- 
him, the second the Hebrew Yahveh or Jehovah. 
In one important section, beginning with the 
fourth verse of the second chapter, and continu- 
ing through the chapter, the two names are com- 
bined, and we have the Supreme Being spoken 
of as "The Lord God," Jehovah-Elohim. It is 
evident to every observing reader that we have 
in the beginning of Genesis two distinct accounts 
of the Creation, the one occupying the first chap- 



48 WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

ter and three verses of the second, the other oc- 
cupying the remainder of the second chapter with 
the whole of the third. The difference between 
these accounts is quite marked. The style of the 
writing, particularly in the Hebrew, is strongly 
contrasted; and the details of the story are not 
entirely harmonious. In the first narrative the 
order of creation is, first the earth and its vegeta- 
tion, then the lower animals, then man, male and 
female, made in God's image. In the second 
narrative the order is, first the earth and its vege- 
tation, then man, then the lower orders of ani- 
mals, then woman. In the first story plant life 
springs into existence at the direct command of 
God ; in the second it results from a mist which 
rose from the earth and watered the whole face 
of the ground. These striking differences would 
be hard to explain if we had not before our faces 
the clear evidence of two old documents joined 
together. 

I spoke in the last chapter of certain historical 
discrepancies which are not explicable on the sup- 
position that this is the work of a single writer. 
Such are the two accounts of the origin of the 
name of Beersheba, the one in the twenty-first 
and the other in the twenty-sixth chapter of Gen- 
esis. The first account says that it was named 
by Abraham, and gives the reason why he called 
the place by this name. The second account 
says that it received its name from Isaac, about 
ninety years later, and gives a wholly different 



SOURCES OF THE PENTATEUCH. 49 

explanation of the reason why he called it by this 
name. When we find that in the first of these 
stories God is called Elohim, 1 and in the second 
Jehovah, we can readily explain this discrepancy. 
The compiler took one of these narratives from 
one of these old documents, and the other from 
the other, and was not careful to reconcile the 
two. 

A similar duplication of the narrative is found 
in chapters xx. and xxvi., with respect to the inci- 
dent of Abimelech ; in the first of these narratives 
a serious complication is described as arising 
between Abimelech King of Gerar on the one 
hand and Abraham and Sarah on the other; in 
the second Abimelech is represented as interfer- 
ing, in precisely the same way and with the same 
results, in the domestic felicity of Isaac and Re- 
bekah. The harmonizers have done their work, 
of course, upon these two passages ; they have 
said that there were two Abimelechs, and that 
Isaac repeated the blunder of his father ; but it 
is a little singular, if this were so, that no refer- 
ence is made in the latter narrative to the former. 
It is altogether probable that we have the same 
story ascribed to different actors ; and when we 
find that the one narrative is Elohistic and the 
other Jehovistic, the problem is solved. 

More curious than any other of these combina- 
tions is the account of the Flood, in which the 

1 In the last verse of this narrative the word Jehovah is used, 
but this is probably an interpolation. 



SO WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

compiler has taken the narratives of these two 
old writers and pieced them together like patch- 
work. Refer to your Bibles and note this piece 
of literary joiner-work. At the fifth verse of the 
sixth chapter of Genesis this story begins ; from 
this verse to the end of the eighth verse the Je- 
hovistic document is used. The name of the 
Deity is Jehovah, translated Lord. From the 
ninth verse to the end of the chapter the Elohis- 
tic document is used. The word applied to God 
is Elohim, translated God. With the seventh 
chapter begins again the quotation from the other 
document, " And the Lord [Jehovah] said unto 
Noah/' This extends only to the sixth verse ; 
then the Elohistic narrative begins again, and 
continues to the nineteenth verse of the eighth 
chapter, including it ; then the Jehovistic nar- 
rative begins again, and continues through the 
chapter ; then the Elohist takes up the tale for 
the first seventeen verses of the ninth chapter ; 
then the Jehovist goes on to the twenty-seventh 
verse, and the Elohist closes the chapter. It is 
true that we have in the midst of some of these 
Elohistic passages a verse or two of the other doc- 
ument inserted by the compiler ; but the outlines 
of the different documents are marked as I have 
told you. If you take this story and dissect out 
of it the portions which I have ascribed to the 
Elohist and put them together, you will have a 
clear, complete, consecutive story of the Flood ; 
the portions of the Jehovistic narrative inserted 



SOURCES OF THE PENTATEUCH. 5 I 

rather tend to confusion. " The consideration 
of the context here," says Bleek, "quite apart 
from the changes in the naming of God, shows 
that the Jehovistic passages of the narrative did 
not originally belong to it. It cannot fail to be 
observed that the connection is often interrupted 
by the Jehovistic passages, and that by cutting 
them out a more valuable and clearer continuity 
of the narrative is almost always obtained. For 
instance, in the existing narrative certain repeti- 
tions keep on occurring ; one of these, especially, 
is connected with a difference in the matters of 
fact related, introducing no slight difficulty and 
obscurity/ ' x 

Hear the Jehovist : " And Jehovah saw that 
the wickedness of man was great in the earth" 
(ch. vi. 5). Now hear the Elohist (v. 11) : " And 
the earth was corrupt before Elohim, and the 
earth was filled with violence." The Jehovist 
says (v. 7) : " And Jehovah said, I will destroy 
man whom I have created from the face of the 
ground." The Elohist says (v. 13) : "The earth 
is filled with violence through them, and behold 
I will destroy them from the earth." In the ninth 
verse of the sixth chapter we read : " Noah was 
a righteous man and perfect in his generation ; 
Noah walked with Elohim." In the first verse 
of the seventh chapter, we read, " And Jehovah 
said unto Noah, Come thou and all thy house into 
the ark ; for thee have I seen righteous before 

1 Vol. i. p. 273. 



52 WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

me in this generation. " These repetitions show 
how the same story is twice told. But the con- 
tradictions are more significant. Here the one 
narrative represents Elohim as saying (vi. 19) : 
" And of every living thing of all flesh, two of 
every kind shalt thou bring into the ark to keep 
them alive with thee ; they shall be male and 
female. Of the fowl after their kind and of the 
cattle after their kind, of every creeping thing of 
the earth after its kind, two of every sort shall 
come unto thee to keep them alive/' But the 
other narrative represents Jehovah as saying, 
" Of every clean beast thou shalt take to thee 
seven and seven, the male and the female ; and 
of the beasts that are not clean, two, the male 
and the female ; of the fowl also of the air seven 
and seven, male and female, to keep seed alive 
upon the face of all the earth." The one story 
says that of every kind of living creature one pair 
should be taken into the ark ; the other says that 
of clean beasts, seven pairs of each species should 
be received, and of unclean beasts only one pair. 
The harmonists have wrestled with this passage 
also ; some of them say that perhaps the first 
passage only meant that they should walk in two 
and two ; others say that a good many years had 
elapsed between the giving of the two commands 
(of which there is not a particle of evidence), and 
we are left to infer that in the mean time the 
Almighty either forgot his first orders, or else 
changed his mind. It is a pitiful instance of an 



SOURCES OF THE PENTATEUCH. 53 

attempt to evade a difficulty that cannot be 
evaded. One of the very conservative commen- 
tators, Dr. Perowne, in Smith's " Bible Diction- 
ary/' concludes to face it : " May we not sup- 
pose," he timidly asks, " that we have here traces 
of a separate document, interwoven by a later 
writer, with the former history? The passage 
has not, indeed, been incorporated intact, but 
there is a coloring about it which seems to indi- 
cate that Moses, or whoever put the book of 
Genesis into its present shape, had here con- 
sulted a different narrative. The distinct use of 
the divine names in the same phrase (vi. 22 ; vii. 
5), in the former Elohim, in the latter Jehovah, 
suggests that this may have been the case." 1 

" May we not suppose," the good doctor asks, 
that we have traces of two documents here ? 
Certainly, your reverence. It is just as safe to 
suppose it, as it is to suppose, when you see a 
nose on a man's face, that it is a nose. There is 
no more doubt about it than there is about any 
other palpable fact. The truth is, that the com- 
posite character of Genesis is no longer, in schol- 
arly circles, an open question. The most cau- 
tious, the most conservative of scholars concede 
the point. Even President Bartlett, of Dart- 
mouth College, a Hebraist of some eminence, 
and as sturdy a defender of old-fashioned ortho- 
doxy as this country holds, made this admission 
more than twenty years ago: "We may accept 

1 Art. "Noah," iii. 2179, American Edition. 



54 WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

the traces of earlier narratives as having been 
employed and authenticated by him {Moses] ; and 
we may admit the marks of later date as indica- 
tions of a surface revision of authorized persons 
not later than Ezra and Nehemiah. ,, And Dr. 
Perowne, the conservative scholar already quoted, 
in the article on the " Pentateuch " in " Smith's 
Bible Dictionary," sums up as follows : — 

" i. The Book of Genesis rests chiefly on doc- 
uments much earlier than the time of Moses, 
though it was probably brought to very nearly 
its present shape either by Moses himself, or by 
one of the elders who acted under him. 

" 2. The books of Exodus, Leviticus, and Num- 
bers are to a great extent Mosaic. Besides those 
portions which are expressly declared to have 
been written by him, other portions, and espe- 
cially the legal sections, were, if not actually 
written, in all probability dictated by him. 

"3. Deuteronomy, excepting the concluding 
part, is entirely the work of Moses, as it professes 
to be. 

" 5. The first composition of the Pentateuch as 
a whole could not have taken place till after the 
Israelites entered Canaan. 

" 6. The whole work did not finally assume its 
present shape till its revision was undertaken by 
Ezra after the return from the Babylonish cap- 
tivity." 

The volume from which I have quoted these 



SOURCES OF THE PENTATEUCH. 55 

words bears the date of 1870. Twenty years of 
very busy work have been expended upon the 
Pentateuch since Dr. Perowne wrote these words ; 
if he were to write to-day he would be much less 
confident that Moses wrote the whole of Deuter- 
onomy, and he would probably modify his state- 
ments in other respects ; but he would retract 
none of these admissions respecting the compos- 
ite character of these five books. 

The same fact of a combination of different 
documents can easily be shown in all the three 
middle books of the Pentateuch, as well as in 
Genesis. This is the fact which explains those 
repetitions of laws, and those singular breaks in 
the history, to which I called your attention in 
the last chapter. There is, as I believe, a large 
element of purely Mosaic legislation in these 
books ; many of these laws were written either 
by the hand of Moses or under his eye ; and the 
rest are so conformed to the spirit which he im- 
pressed upon the Hebrew jurisprudence that they 
may be fairly called Mosaic ; but many of them, 
on the other hand, were written long after his 
day, and the whole Pentateuch did not reach its 
present form until after the exile, in the days of 
Ezra and Nehemiah. 

The upholders of the traditional theory — that 
Moses wrote the Pentateuch, just as. Blackstone 
wrote his Commentaries — are wont to make much 
account of the disagreements of those critics who 
have undertaken to analyze it into its component 



56 WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

parts. " These critics," they say, "are all at log- 
gerheads ; they do not agree with one another ; 
none of them even agrees with himself very long ; 
most of them have several times revised their 
theories, and there seems to be neither certainty 
nor coherency in their speculations. " But this is 
not quite true. With respect to some subordinate 
questions they are not agreed, and probably never 
will be ; but with respect to the fact that these 
books are composite in their origin they are per- 
fectly agreed, and they are also remarkably unan- 
imous in their judgments as to where the lines 
of cleavage run between these component parts. 
The consensus of critical opinion now is that 
there are at least four great documents which 
have been combined in the Pentateuch ; and the 
critics agree in the main features of the analysis, 
though they do not all call these separated parts 
by the same names, nor do they all think alike 
concerning the relative antiquity of these por- 
tions. Some think that one of these documents 
is the oldest, and some give that distinction to 
another ; nor do they agree as to how old the old- 
est is, some bringing the earliest composition down 
to a recent period ; but on the main question that 
the literature is composite they are at one. The 
closeness of their agreement is shown by Pro- 
fessor Ladd in a series of tables * in which he 
displays to the eye the results of the analysis of 
four independent investigators, Knobel, Schra- 

1 The Doctrine of Sacred Scripture, Part II. chap. vii. 



SOURCES OF THE PENTATEUCH. 57 

der, Dillmann, and Wellhausen. He goes through 
the whole of the Pentateuch and the Book of 
Joshua, — the Hexateuch, as it is now called, — 
and picks out of every chapter those verses as- 
signed by these several authorities to that an- 
cient writing which we have been calling the 
Elohistic narrative, and arranges them in par- 
allel columns. You can see at a glance when 
they agree in this analysis, and when they dis- 
agree. I think that you would be astonished to 
find that the agreements are so many and the 
disagreements so few. So much unity of judg- 
ment would be impossible if the lines of cleavage 
between these old documents were not marked 
with considerable distinctness. " The only satis- 
factory explanation/' says Professor Ladd, " of the 
possibility of accomplishing such a work of analy- 
sis is the fact that the analysis is substantially 
correct." * 

Professor C. A. Briggs, of the Union (Presby- 
terian) Theological Seminary in New York, bore 
this testimony three years ago in the " Presbyte- 
rian Review : " "The critical analysis of the Hex- 
ateuch is the result of more than a century of 
profound study of the documents by the greatest 
critics of the age. There has been a steady ad- 
vance until the present position of agreement has 
been reached, in which Jew and Christian, Ro- 
man Catholic and Protestant, Rationalistic and 
Evangelical scholars, Reformed and Lutheran, 

1 What is the Bible ? p. 311. 



58 WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

Presbyterian and Episcopal, Unitarian, Metho- 
dist, and Baptist all concur. The analysis of 
the Hexateuch into several distinct original doc- 
uments is a purely literary question in which no 
article of faith is involved. Whoever in these 
times, in the discussion of the literary phenom- 
ena of the Hexateuch, appeals to the ignorance 
and prejudices of the multitude as if there were 
any peril to faith in these processes of the Higher 
Criticism, risks his reputation for scholarship by 
so doing. There are no Hebrew professors on 
the continent of Europe, so far as I know, who 
would deny the literary analysis of the Pentateuch 
into the four great documents. The professors of 
Hebrew in the Universities of Oxford, Cambridge, 
and Edinburgh, and tutors in a large number of 
theological colleges, hold to the same opinion. A 
very considerable number of the Hebrew profes- 
sors of America are in accord with them. There 
are, indeed, a few professional scholars who hold 
to the traditional opinion, but these are in a hope- 
less minority. I doubt whether there is any ques- 
tion of scholarship whatever in which there is 
greater agreement among scholars than in this 
question of the literary analysis of the Hexa- 
teuch;' 

I have but one more witness to introduce, and 
it shall be the distinguished German professor 
Delitzsch, who has long been regarded as the 
bulwark of evangelical orthodoxy in Germany. 
" His name," says Professor Ladd, " has for many 



SOURCES OF THE PENTATEUCH. 59 

years been connected with the conception of a 
devout Christian scholarship used in the defense 
of the faith against attacks upon the supernatural 
character of the Old Testament religion and of 
the writings which record its development." In 
a preface to his commentary on Isaiah published 
since his recent death, he speaks with great hu- 
mility of the work. that he has done, adding, "Of 
one thing only do I think I may be confident, — 
that the spirit by which it is animated comes from 
the good Spirit that guides along the everlasting 
way." The opinion of such a scholar ought to 
have weight with all serious-minded Christians. 
When I give you his latest word on this question, 
you will recognize that you have all that the 
ripest and most devout scholarship can claim. 
Let me quote, then, Professor Ladd's abstract of 
his verdict : — 

" In the opinion of Professor Delitzsch only the 
basis of the several codes . . . incorporated in 
the Pentateuch is Mosaic ; the form in which 
these codes . . . are presented in the Pentateuch 
is of an origin much later than the time of Moses. 
The Decalogue and the laws forming the Book of 
the Covenant are the most ancient portions ; they 
preserve the Mosaic type in its relatively oldest 
and purest form. Of this type Deuteronomy is 
a development. The statement that Moses ' wrote ' 
the Deuteronomic law (Deut. xxxi. 9, 24) does not 
refer to the present Book of Deuteronomy \ but to the 
code of laws which underlies it. 



60 WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

" The Priest's Code, which embodies the more 
distinctively ritualistic and ceremonial legislation, 
is the result of a long and progressive develop- 
ment. Certain of its principles originated with 
Moses, but its form, which is utterly unlike that 
of the other parts of the Pentateuch, was received 
at the hands of the priests of the nation. Proba- 
bly some particular priest, at a much later date, 
indeed, than the time of Moses, but prior to the 
composition of Deuteronomy, was especially in- 
fluential in shaping it. But the last stages of its 
development may belong to the period after the 
Exile. 

"The historical traditions which are incorpo- 
rated into the Hexateuch were committed to writ- 
ing at different times and by different hands. 
The narratives of them are superimposed, as it 
were, stratum upon stratum, in the Pentateuch 
and the Book of Joshua. For the Book of Joshua 
is connected intimately with the Pentateuch, and 
when analyzed shows the same composite struc- 
ture. The differences which the several codes 
exhibit are due to modifications which they re- 
ceived in the course of history as they were vari- 
ously collected, revised, and passed from genera- 
tion to generation. . . . The Pentateuch, like all 
the other historical books of the Bible, is com- 
posed of documentary sources, differing alike in 
character and age, which critical analysis may 
still be able, with greater or less certainty, to dis- 
tinguish and separate from one another." 1 

1 What is the Bible ? pp. 489-491. 



SOURCES OF THE PENTATEUCH. 6 1 

That such is the fact with respect to the struc- 
ture of these ancient writings is now beyond ques- 
tion. And our theory of inspiration must be ad- 
justed to this fact. Evidently neither the theory 
of verbal inspiration, nor the theory of plenary 
inspiration can be made to fit the facts which a 
careful study of the writings themselves bring 
before us. These writings are not inspired in 
the sense which we have commonly given to that 
word. The verbal theory of inspiration was only 
tenable while they were supposed to be the work 
of a single author. To such a composite litera- 
ture no such theory will apply. " To make this 
claim," says Professor Ladd, "and yet accept the 
best ascertained results of criticism, would com- 
pel us to take such positions as the following : 
The original authors of each one of the writings 
which enter into the composite structure were 
infallibly inspired ; every one who made any 
changes in any one of these fundamental writ- 
ings was infallibly inspired ; every compiler who 
put together two or more of these writings was 
infallibly inspired, both as to his selections and 
transmissions [omissions ?], and as to any con- 
necting or explanatory words which he might 
himself write; every redactor was infallibly in- 
spired to correct and supplement and omit that 
which was the product of previous infallible in- 
spirations. Or perhaps it might seem more con- 
venient to attach the claim of a plenary inspira- 
tion to the last redactor of all ; but then we 



62 WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

should probably have selected of all others the 
one least able to bear the weight of such a claim. 
Think of making the claim for a plenary inspira- 
tion of the Pentateuch in its present form on 
the ground of the infallibility of that one of the 
Scribes who gave it its last touches some time 
subsequent to the date of Ezra ! " 2 

And yet this does not signify that these books 
are valueless. When it was discovered that the 
Homeric writings were not all the work of Ho- 
mer, the value of the Homeric writings was not 
affected. As pictures of the life of that remote 
antiquity they had not lost their significance. 
The value of these Mosaic books is of a very dif- 
ferent sort from that of the Homeric writings, 
but the discoveries of the Higher Criticism affect 
them no more seriously. Even their historical 
character is by no means overthrown. You can 
find in Herodotus and in Livy discrepancies and 
contradictions, but this does not lead you to re- 
gard their writings as worthless. There are no 
infallible histories, but that is no reason why you 
should not study history, or why you should read 
all history with the inclination to reject every 
statement which is not forced on your acceptance 
by evidence which you cannot gainsay. 

These books of Moses are the treasury, indeed, 
of no little valuable history. They are not infal- 
lible, but they contain a great deal of truth which 
we find nowhere else, and which is yet wonder- 

1 The Doctrine of Sacred Scripture ', i. 499. 



SOURCES OF THE PENTATEUCH? 63 

fully corroborated by all that we do know. Ewald 
declares that in the fourteenth chapter of Gene- 
sis Abraham is brought before us " in the clear 
light of history." From monuments and other 
sources the substantial accuracy of this narra- 
tive is confirmed ; and the account of the visit 
of Abraham to Egypt conforms, in all its minute 
incidents, to the life of Egypt at that time. The 
name Pharaoh is the right name for the kings 
reigning then ; the behavior of the servants of 
Pharaoh is perfectly in keeping with the popular 
ideas and practices as the monuments reveal 
them. The story of Joseph has been confirmed, 
as to its essential accuracy, as to the verisimili- 
tude of its pictures of Egyptian life, by every re- 
cent discovery. Georg Ebers declares that " this 
narrative contains nothing which does not accu- 
rately correspond to a court of Pharaoh in the 
best times of the Kingdom." Many features of 
this narrative which a rash skepticism has as- 
sailed have been verified by later discoveries. 

We are told in the Exodus that the Israelites 
were impressed by Pharaoh into building for him 
two' store-cities (" treasure cities," the old ver- 
sion calls them), named Pithom and Rameses, and 
that in this work they were made to " serve with 
rigor;" that their lives were embittered "with 
hard service in mortar and brick and all manner 
of hard service in the field ; " that they were 
sometimes forced to make brick without straw. 
The whereabouts of these store-cities, and the 



64 WHO WROTE THE BIBLE ? 

precise meaning of the term applied to them, has 
been a matter of much conjecture, and the story 
has sometimes been set aside as a myth. To 
Pithom there is no clear historical reference in 
any other book except Exodus. Only four or 
five years ago a Genevese explorer unearthed, 
near the route of the Suez Canal, this very city ; 
found several ruined monuments with the name 
of the city plainly inscribed on them, "Pi Turn," 
and excavating still further uncovered a ruin of 
which the following is Mr. Rawlinson's descrip- 
tion : " The town is altogether a square, inclosed 
by a brick wall twenty-two feet thick, and meas- 
uring six hundred and fifty feet along each side. 
Nearly the whole of the space is occupied by sol- 
idly built, square chambers, divided one from an- 
other by brick walls, from eight to ten feet thick, 
which are unpierced by window or door or open- 
ing of any kind. About ten feet from the bot- 
tom the walls show a row of recesses for beams, 
in some of which decayed wood still remains, in- 
dicating that the buildings were two-storied, hav- 
ing a lower room which could only be entered by 
a trap-door, used probably as a store-house, or 
magazine, and an upper one in which the keeper 
of the store may have had his abode. Therefore 
this discovery is simply that of a ' store-city/ 
built partly by Rameses II. ; but it further ap- 
pears from several short inscriptions, that the 
name of the city was Pa Turn, or Pithom ; and 
thus there is no reasonable doubt that one of the 



SOURCES OF THE PENTATEUCH. 65 

two cities built by the Israelites has been laid 
bare, and answers completely to the description 
given of it" l 

The walls of Egypt were not all laid with mor- 
tar, but the record speaks of mortar in this case, 
and here it is : the several courses of these build- 
ings were usually "laid with mortar in regular 
tiers." More striking still is the fact that in 
some of these buildings, while the lower tiers are 
composed of bricks having straw in them, the 
upper tiers consist of a poorer quality of bricks 
without straw. Photographs may be seen in this 
country of some of these brick granaries of this 
old store-city of Pithom, with the line of division 
plainly showing between the two kinds of bricks ; 
and thus we have before our eyes a most strik- 
ing confirmation of the truth of this story of the 
bondage of the Israelites in Egypt. Quite a 
number of such testimonies to the substantial 
historical verity of these Old Testament records 
have been discovered in recent years as old 
mounds have been opened in Egypt and in Chal- 
dea, and the monuments of buried centuries have 
told their story to the wondering world. The 
books are not infallible, but he who sets them all 
aside as a collection of myths or fables exposes 
his ignorance in a lamentable way. 

But what is far more to the purpose, the ideas 
running all through the old literature, the con- 
structive truths of science, of ethics, of religion, 

1 Quoted by Robinson in The Pharaohs of the Bondage, p. 97. 



66 WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

are pure and lofty and full of saving power. 
Even science, I say, owes much to Genesis. The 
story of the Creation in the first chapter of Gen- 
esis must not indeed be taken for veritable his- 
tory ; but it is a solemn hymn in which some 
great truths of the world's origin are sublimely set 
forth. It gives us the distinct idea of the unity 
of Creation, — sweeping away, at one mighty 
stroke, the whole system of naturalistic polythe- 
ism, which makes science impossible, when it de- 
clares that "In the beginning God created the 
heavens and the earth." In the same words it 
sets forth the truth by whose light science alone 
walks safely, that the source of all things is a 
spiritual cause. The God from whose power all 
things proceed is not a fortuitous concourse of 
atoms, but a spiritual intelligence. From this liv- 
ing God came forth matter with its forces, life 
with its organisms, mind with its freedom. And 
although it may not be possible to force the 
words of this ancient hymn into scientific state- 
ments of the order of creation, it is most clear 
that it implies a continuous process, a law of de- 
velopment, in the generations of the heaven and 
the earth. This is not a scientific treatise of cre- 
ation, but the alphabet of science is here, as Dr. 
Newman Smyth has said ; and it is correct. The 
guiding lights of scientific study are in these 
great principles. 

Similarly the ethical elements and tendencies 
of these old writings are sound and strong. I 



SOURCES OF THE PENTATEUCH. 67 

have shown you how defective many of the Mo- 
saic laws are when judged by Christian stand- 
ards ; but all this legislation contains formative 
ideas and principles by which it tends to purify 
itself. Human sacrifices were common among 
the surrounding nations ; the story of Abraham 
and Isaac banishes that horror forever from He- 
brew history. Slavery was universal, but the law 
of the Jubilee Year made an end of domestic 
slavery in Israel. The family was foundation- 
less ; the wife's rights rested wholly on the ca- 
price of her husband ; but that law of divorce 
which I quoted to you, and which our Lord re- 
pealed, set some bounds to this caprice, for the 
husband was compelled to go through certain 
formalities before he could turn his wife out of 
doors. The law of blood vengeance, though in 
terms it authorized murder, yet in effect power- 
fully restrained the violence of that rude age, 
and gave a chance for the development of that 
idea of the sacredness of life which to us is a 
moral commonplace, but which had scarcely 
dawned upon the minds of those old Hebrews. 
Thus the history shows a people moving steadily 
forward under moral leadership, out of barbarism 
into higher civilization, and we can trace the very 
process by which the moral maxims which to us 
are almost axioms have been cleared of the crudi- 
ties of passion and animalism, and stamped upon 
the consciousness of men. Is not God in all this 
history ? 



68 WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

Those first principles which I have called the 
guiding lights of science are also the elements of 
pure religion. Science and religion spell out dif- 
ferent messages to men, but they start with the 
same alphabet. And the religious purity of that 
hymn of the Creation is not less wonderful than 
its scientific verity. Compare it with the other 
traditional stories of the origin of things ; com- 
pare it with the mythologies of Egypt, of Chal- 
dea, of Greece and Rome, and see how far above 
them it stands in spiritual dignity, in moral beauty. 
" We could more easily, indeed," says Dr. Newman 
Smyth, " compute how much a pure spring well- 
ing up at the source of a brook that widens into 
a river, has done for meadow and grass and flow- 
ers and overhanging trees, for thousands of years, 
than estimate the influence of this purest of all 
ancient traditions of the Creation, as it has en- 
tered into the lives and revived the consciences 
of men ; as it has purified countries of idolatries 
and swept away superstition ; and has flowed on 
and on with the increasing truth of history, and 
kept fresh and fruitful, from generation to gener- 
ation, faith in the One God and the common par- 
entage of men." 1 

Above all, we find in all this literature the plant- 
ing and the first germination of that great hope 
which turned the thought of this people from the 
earliest generations toward the future, and made 
them trust and pray and wait, in darkest times, 

1 Old Faiths in New Light, p. 73. 



SOURCES OF THE PENTATEUCH. 69 

for better days to come. " Speak unto the children 
of Israel that they go forward ! " This is the voice 
that is always sounding from the heights above 
them, whether they halt by the shore of the sea, 
or bivouac in the wilderness. They do not always 
obey the voice, but it never fails to rouse and 
summon them. No people of all history has lived 
in the future as Israel did. " By faith" they 
worshiped and trusted and wrought and fought, 
the worthies of this old religion ; towards lands 
that they had not seen they set their faces ; con- 
cerning things to come they were always prophe- 
sying ; and it is this great hope that forms the 
germ of the Messianic expectation by which they 
reach forth to the glories of the latter day. This 
attitude of Israel, in all the generations, is the 
one striking feature of this history. No soulless 
sphinx facing a trackless desert with blind eyes 
— no impassive Buddha ensphered in placid si- 
lence — is the genius of this people, but some 
strong angel poised on mighty pinion above the 
highest peak of Pisgah, and scanning with swift 
glances the beauty of the promised land. Now 
any people of which this is true must be, in a 
large sense of the word, an inspired people ; and 
their literature, with all the signs of imperfection 
which must appear in it, on account of the me- 
dium through which it comes, will give proof of 
the divine ideas and forces that are working 
themselves out in their history. 

It is in this large way of looking at the Hebrew 



yo WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

literature that we discover its real preciousness. 
And when we get this large conception, then 
petty questions about the absolute accuracy of 
texts and dates no longer trouble us. " He who 
has once gained this broader view of the Bible/' 
says Dr. Newman Smyth, "as the development of 
a course of history itself guided and inspired by 
Jehovah, will not be disconcerted by the confused 
noises of the critic. His faith in the Word of 
God lies deeper than any difficulties or flaws 
upon the surface of the Bible. He will not be 
disturbed by seeing any theory of its mechanical 
formation, or school-book infallibility broken to 
fragments under the repeated blows of modern 
investigation ; the water of life will flow from 
the rock which the scholar strikes with his rod. 
He can wait, without fear, for a candid and thor- 
ough study of these sacred writings to determine, 
if possible, what parts are genuine, and what nar- 
ratives, if any, are unhistorical. His belief in the 
Word of God, from generation to generation, does 
not depend upon the minor incidents of the Bib- 
lical stories ; it would not be destroyed or weak- 
ened, even though human traditions could be 
shown to have overgrown some parts of this 
sacred history, as the ivy, creeping up the wall of 
the church, does not loosen its ancient stones." 1 

1 Old Faiths in New Light, p. 59. 



CHAPTER IV. 

THE EARLIER HEBREW HISTORIES. 

We found reasons, in previous chapters, for 
believing that considerable portions of the Leviti- 
cal legislation came from the hands of Moses, 
although the narratives of the Pentateuch and 
many of its laws were put into their present form 
long after the time of Moses. The composite 
character of all this old literature has been dem- 
onstrated. The fact that its materials were col- 
lected from several sources, by a process extend- 
ing through many centuries, and that the work of 
redaction was not completed until the people re- 
turned from the exile about five centuries before 
Christ, and almost a thousand years after the 
death of Moses, are facts now as well established 
as any other results of scholarly research. 

Nevertheless, we have maintained that the Is- 
raelites possessed, when they entered Canaan, a 
considerable body of legislation framed under the 
eye of Moses and bearing his name. Throughout 
the Book of Joshua this legislation is frequently 
referred to. If the Book of Joshua was, as we 
have assumed, originally connected with the first 
five books, constituting what is now called the 



*]2 WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

Hexateuch, if these six books were put into their 
present form by the same writers, we should ex- 
pect that the Mosaic legislation would be clearly 
traced through all these books. 

But when we go forward in this history we 
come at once upon a remarkable fact. The Book 
of Judges, the Book of Ruth, and the two books 
of Samuel cover a period of Jewish history esti- 
mated in our common chronology at more than 
four hundred years, and in these four books there 
is no mention whatever of that Mosaic legislation 
which constituted, as we have supposed, the germ 
of the Pentateuch. The name of Moses is men- 
tioned only six times in these four books ; twice 
in the early chapters of the Judges in connection 
with the settlement of the kindred of his wife in 
Canaan ; once in a reference to an order given 
by Moses that Hebron should be given to Caleb ; 
twice in a single passage in I Samuel xii., where 
Moses and Aaron are referred to as leaders of 
the people out of Egyptian bondage, and once in 
Judges iii. 4, where it is said that certain of the 
native races were left in Canaan, " to prove Israel 
by them, whether they would hearken to the com- 
mandments of the Lord which he commanded 
their fathers by the hand of Moses." This last 
is the only place in all these books where there 
is the faintest allusion to any legislation left to 
the Israelites by Moses ; and this reference does 
not make it clear whether the "commandments" 
referred to were written or oral. The word " law " 



THE EARLIER HEBREW HISTORIES. 73 

is not found in these four books. There is noth- 
ing in any of these books to indicate that the 
children of Israel possessed any written laws. 

There are, indeed, in Ruth and in the Judges 
frequent accounts of observances that are en- 
joined in the Pentateuch ; and in Samuel we read 
of the tabernacle and the ark and the offering of 
sacrifices ; the history tells us that some of the 
things commanded in the Mosaic law were ob- 
served during this period ; but when we look in 
these books for any reference or appeal to the 
sacred writings of Moses, or to any other sacred 
writings, or to any laws or statutes or written 
ordinances for the government of the people, we 
look in vain. Samuel the Prophet anointed Saul 
and afterward David as Kings of Israel ; but if, 
on these solemn occasions, he said anything about 
the writings of Moses or the law of Moses, the 
fact is not mentioned. The records afford us no 
ground for affirming that either Samuel or Saul 
was aware of the existence of such sacred writ- 



ings. 



This is a notable fact. That the written law 
of Moses should, for four centuries of Hebrew 
history, have disappeared so completely from no- 
tice that the historian did not find it necessary to 
make any allusion to it, is a circumstance that 
needs explanation. 

It is true, as I have said, that during this period 
certain observances required by the law were 
kept more or less regularly. But it is also true 



74 WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

that many of the most specific and solemn re- 
quirements of the law were neglected or violated 
during all these years by the holiest men. The 
Mosaic law utterly forbids the offering of sacri- 
fices at any other place than the central sanctu- 
ary, the tabernacle or the temple ; but the narra- 
tive of these early historical books shows all the 
saints and heroes of the earlier history build- 
ing altars, and offering sacrifices freely in many 
places, with no apparent consciousness of trans- 
gression, — nay, with the strongest assurance of 
the divine approval. " Samuel," says Professor 
Robertson Smith, ''sacrifices on many high 
places, Saul builds altars, David and his son Sol- 
omon permit the worship at the high places to 
continue, and the historian recognizes this as 
legitimate because the temple was not yet built 
(i Kings iii. 2-4). In Northern Israel this state 
of things was never changed. The high places 
were an established feature in the Kingdom of 
Ephraim, and Elijah himself declares that the 
destruction of the altars of Jehovah — all illegit- 
imate according to the Pentateuch — is a breach 
of Jehovah's covenant." * 

According to the Levitical law it was positively 
unlawful for any person but the high priest ever 
to go into the innermost sanctuary, the holy of 
holies, where the ark of God was kept ; and the 
high priest could go into that awful place but 
once a year. But we find the boy Samuel ac- 

1 The Old Testament in the Jewish Church, pp. 220, 221, 



THE EARLIER HEBREW HISTORIES. f$ 

tually sleeping " in the temple of the Lord where 
the ark of the Lord was." The old version con- 
ceals this fact by a mistranslation. These are 
only a few of many violations of the Pentateuchal 
legislation which we find recorded in these books. 

From the silence of these earlier histories con- 
cerning the law of Moses, and from these many 
transgressions, by the holiest men, of the posi- 
tive requirements of the Pentateuchal legislation, 
the conclusion has been drawn by recent critics 
that the Pentateuchal legislation could not have 
been in existence during this period of history ; 
that it must have been produced at a later day. 
It must be admitted that they make out a strong 
case. For reasons presented in the second chap- 
ter, I am unable to accept their theory. It is prob- 
able, however, that the code of laws in existence 
at this time was a limited and simple code — no 
such elaborate ritual as that which we now find 
in the Pentateuch ; and that those particular re- 
quirements with respect to which the earlier 
Judges and Samuel and David appear to behave 
themselves so disorderly, had not then been en- 
acted. 

Moreover, it seems to be necessary to admit 
that there was a surprising amount of popular 
ignorance respecting even those portions of the 
law which were then in existence. This is the 
astonishing phenomenon. Attempts are made to 
illustrate it by the ignorance of the Bible which 
prevailed among our own ancestors before the in- 



?6 WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

vention of printing ; but no parallel can be found, 
as I believe, in the mediaeval history of Europe. 
It is true that many of the common people were 
altogether unfamiliar with the Bible in mediaeval 
times ; but we cannot conceive of such a thing 
as that the priests, the learned men, and the lead- 
ers of the church at that time, should have been 
unaware of the existence of such a book. 

On his death-bed David is said to have admon- 
ished Solomon (i Kings ii. 3), that he should 
keep the statutes and commandments of the 
Lord, " according to that which is written in the 
law of Moses." This is the first reference to the 
Mosaic law which we find in connection with the 
history of David ; the first mention of a written 
law since the death of Joshua, four centuries be- 
fore. After this there are three other casual allu- 
sions to the law of Moses in the first book of 
Kings, and four in the second book. The books 
of Chronicles, which follow the Kings, contain 
frequent allusions to the law ; but these books, 
as we shall see by and by, were written long 
afterward ; and the tradition which they embody 
cannot be so safe a guide as that of the earlier 
histories. It is in Chronicles that we learn of 
the attempt which was made by one of the good 
kings of Judah, Jehoshaphat, to have certain 
princes, priests, and Levites appointed to teach 
the law ; they went about the land, it is said, 
teaching the people, "and had the book of the 
law of Jehovah with them." I think that this is 



THE EARLIER HEBREW HISTORIES. J? 

the first intimation, after the death of Moses, that 
the law delivered by him had been publicly taught 
or even read in connection with the ordinances 
of worship. The earlier narrative of Jehosha- 
phat's reign, which we find in the Book of the 
Kings, makes no allusion to this circumstance. 

Nearly three hundred years after Jehoshaphat, 
and nearly five hundred years after David, the 
young King Josiah was reigning in Jerusalem. 
The temple had fallen into ruin, and the good 
king determined to have it repaired. Hilkiah, 
the high priest, who was rummaging among the 
rubbish of the dilapidated sanctuary, found there 
the Book of the Law of the Lord. The surprise 
which he manifests at this discovery, the trepida- 
tion of Shaphan the scribe, who hastens to tell 
the king about it, and the consternation of the 
king when he listens for the first time in his life 
to the reading of the book, and discovers how 
grievously its commandments have been dis- 
obeyed, form one of the most striking scenes of 
the old history. " How are we to explain," asks 
Dr. Perowne, " this surprise and alarm in the 
mind of Josiah, betraying, as it does, such utter 
ignorance of the Book of the Law and the severity 
of its threatenings, — except on the supposition 
that as a written document it had well-nigh per- 
ished ? " * Undoubtedly " the Book of the Law " 
thus discovered was that body of legislation which 
lies at the heart of the Deuteronomic code ; and 

1 Smith's Bible Dictionary, art. " Pentateuch." 



78 WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

this was never again lost sight of by the Jewish 
people. It was less than fifty years after this 
that Nebuchadnezzar destroyed the city and the 
temple and carried the people away into captiv- 
ity. And it was not until their return from the 
Captivity, seventy years later, that these sacred 
writings began to assume that place of eminence 
in the religious system of the Jews which they 
have held in later times. The man by whom the 
Jews were taught to cherish and study these 
writings was Ezra, one of the returning exiles. 
This Ezra, the record says, " was a ready scribe 
in the law of Moses which the Lord God of Israel 
had given," and "he had prepared his heart to 
seek the law of the Lord, and to do it and to 
teach in Israel statutes and judgments." He it 
was, no doubt, who gave to these laws their last 
revision, and who put the Pentateuch substantially 
into the shape in which we have it now. Doubt- 
less much was added at this time ; ritual rules 
which had been handed down orally were written 
out and made part of the code ; the Pentateuch, 
after the Exile, was a more elaborate law book 
than that which Hilkiah found in the old temple. 
Under the presidency of Ezra in Jerusalem, and 
in the days which followed, the Book of the Law 
was exalted ; it was the standard of authority ; it 
was read in the temple and explained in the syn- 
agogues ; its writings were woven into all the 
thought and life of the people of Israel ; there 
never has been a time since that day when the 



THE EARLIER HEBREW HISTORIES. 79 

history of the reign* of any king could have been 
written without mentioning the law of Moses ; 
there never has been a decade when any adequate 
account of the life of the Jewish people could 
have been given which would not bring this book 
constantly into view. 

This Book of the Law, as finally completed by 
Ezra and his co-laborers, was the foundation of 
the Hebrew Scriptures ; it possessed a sacredness 
in the eyes of the Jews far higher than that per- 
taining to any other part of their writings. Next 
to this in age and importance was the great divi- 
sion of their Scriptures known by them as "The 
Prophets:' 

After the Book of the Law was given to the 
people with great solemnity, in the days of Ezra, 
and the public reading and explanation of it be- 
came a principal part of the worship of the Jews, 
it began to be noised abroad that there were cer- 
tain other sacred writings worthy to be known 
and treasured. The only information we have 
concerning the beginning of this second collec- 
tion is found in one of the apocryphal books, the 
second of Maccabees (ii. 14), in which we are told 
that Neemias (Nehemiah), in " founding a library, 
gathered together the acts of the kings, and [the 
writings of] the prophets, and of David, and the 
epistles of the kings concerning the holy gifts." 
These last named documents are not now in ex- 
istence. They appear to have been the letters 
and commissions of Babylonian and Persian kings 



80 WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

respecting the return of the people to Jerusalem 
and the rebuilding of the temple. The other 
writings mentioned are, however, all known to 
us, and are included in our collection. It is not 
certain that Nehemiah began this collection ; it 
may have been initiated before his day, and the 
" founding' ' of the library may have been only 
the work of providing for the preservation and 
arrangement of books already in his possession. 
This second collection of sacred writings, called 
The Prophets, was divided, as I have before 
stated, into the Earlier and the Later Prophets ; 
the former subdivision containing the books of 
Joshua, 1 Judges, Samuel, and Kings ; the latter, 
the books which we now regard and class as the 
prophecies. Ruth was at first considered as a 
part of the Judges, and was included among the 
"Earlier Prophets/' and Lamentations was ap- 
pended to Jeremiah, and included among the 
"Later Prophets." These two books were after- 
ward removed from this collection, for liturgical 
reasons, and placed in the third group of writings, 
of which we shall speak farther on. 

It is probable that the prophetic writings 
proper were first collected ; but it will be more 
convenient to speak first of the books known to 
the Jews as the "Earlier Prophets," and to us as 
the Old Testament Histories, — Judges, Ruth, 
Samuel, and the Kings. 

1 Joshua, although originally a portion of the pentateuchal lit- 
erature, was, about the time of the Exile, separated from the first 
five books, and put into this later collection. 



THE EARLIER HEBREW HISTORIES. 8 1 

These books take up the history of Israel at 
the death of Joshua, and continue it to the time 
of the Captivity, a period of more than eight cen- 
turies. Some of the critics are inclined to con- 
nect them all together as successive volumes of 
one great history ; but there is not much founda- 
tion for this judgment, and it is better to treat 
them separately. 

The Book of Judges contains the annals of the 
Israelites after the death of Joshua, and covers a 
period of three or four centuries. It was a period 
of disorder and turbulence, — the "Dark Ages" 
of Jewish history ; when every man, as the rec- 
ord often says, " did that which was right in his 
own eyes." There is frequent mention of the 
keeping of various observances enjoined in the 
laws of Moses ; but there is no express mention 
of these laws in the book. The story is chiefly 
occupied with the northern tribes ; no mention 
is made of Judah after the third chapter ; and it 
is largely a recital of the various wars of deliver- 
ance and defense waged by these northern He- 
brews against the surrounding peoples, under 
certain leaders who arose, in a providential way, 
to take command of them. 

The questions, Who wrote it ? and When was 
it written ? are not easily answered. It would 
appear that portions of it must have been written 
after the time of Saul, for the phrase, frequently 
repeated, " there was then no king in the land," 
looks back from a period when there was a king 



82 WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

in the land. And it would appear that the first 
chapter must have been written before the mid- 
dle of the reign of King David ; for it tells us 
that the Jebusites had not yet been driven out of 
Jerusalem ; that they still held that stronghold ; 
while in 2 Samuel v. 6, 7, we are told of the ex- 
pulsion of the Jebusites by David, who made the 
place his capital from that time. The tradition 
that Samuel wrote the book rests on no adequate 
foundation. 

The evidence that this book also was compiled, 
by some later writer, from various written docu- 
ments, is abundant and convincing. There are 
two distinct introductions, one of which com- 
prises the first chapter and five verses of the sec- 
ond, and the other of which occupies the remain- 
der of the second chapter. The first of these 
begins thus : " And it came to pass after the 
death of Joshua that the children of Israel asked 
of the Lord, saying, Who shall go up for us 
against the Canaanites, to fight against them? ,, 
The second of these introductions begins by tell- 
ing how Joshua sent the people away, after his 
farewell address, and goes on (ii. 8) to say, "And 
Joshua the son of Nun the servant of the Lord 
died, being an hundred and ten years old." After 
recounting a number of events which happened, 
as it tells us, after the death of Joshua, the narra- 
tive goes on to give us as naively as possible an 
account of Joshua's death. If this were a con- 
secutive narrative from the hand of one writer, 



THE EARLIER HEBREW HISTORIES. 83 

inspired or otherwise, such an arrangement would 
be inexplicable ; but if we have here a combina- 
tion of two or more independent documents, the 
explanation is not difficult. It is a little puzzling, 
too, to find the circumstances of the death of 
Joshua repeated here, in almost the same words 
as those which we find in the Book of Joshua 
(xxiv. 29-31). It would seem either that the 
writer of Joshua must have copied from Judges, 
or the writer of Judges from Joshua, or else that 
both copied from some older document this ac- 
count of Joshua's death. 

Another still more striking illustration of the 
manner in which these old books are constructed 
is found in the account given in the first chap- 
ter of the capture of Debir, by Caleb (i. 1 1— 15). 
Here it is expressly said that this capture took 
place after the death of Joshua, as a consequence 
of the leadership assigned by Jehovah to the tribe 
of Judah in this war against the Canaanites. But 
the same narrative, in the same words, is found in 
the Book of Joshua (xv. 15-19), and here we are 
told no less explicitly that the incident happened 
during the lifetime of Joshua. There is no doubt 
that the incident happened ; it is a simple and 
natural story, and carries the marks of credibility 
upon its face ; but if it happened after the death 
of Joshua it did not happen before his death ; 
one of these narrators borrowed the story from 
the other, or else both borrowed it from a com- 
mon source ; and one of them, certainly, put it 



84 WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

in the wrong place, — one of them must have 
been mistaken as to the time when it occurred. 
Such a mistake is of no consequence at all to one 
who holds a rational theory of inspiration; he 
expects to find in these old documents just such 
errors and misplacements ; they do not in the 
least affect the true value of the book ; but it 
must be obvious to any one that instances of this 
nature cannot be reconciled with the theory of an 
infallible book, which has been generally regarded 
as the only true theory. 

The book is of the utmost value as showing us 
the state of morals and manners in that far-off 
time, and letting us see with what crude material 
the great ideas committed to Israel — the unity 
and spirituality and righteousness of God — were 
compelled to work themselves out. 

The Book of Ruth, which was formerly, in the 
Jewish collections, regarded as a part of the Book 
of Judges, is a beautiful pastoral idyl of the same 
period. Its scene is laid in Judea, and it serves 
to show us that in the midst of all those turbu- 
lent ages there were quiet homes and gentle lives. 
No sweeter story can be found in any literature ; 
maternal tenderness, filial affection, genuine chiv- 
alry, find in the book their typical representa- 
tives. The first sentence of the book gives us 
the approximate date of the incidents recorded : 
it was "in the days when the judges judged." 
The concluding verses give us the genealogy of 
King David, showing that Ruth was his great- 



THE EARLIER HEBREW HISTORIES. 85 

grandmother ; it must, therefore, have been writ- 
ten as late as the reign of David, — probably 
much later ; for it describes, as if they belonged 
to a remote antiquity, certain usages of the Jews 
which must needs have shaped themselves after 
the occupation of Canaan. Yet it could scarcely 
have been written so late as the Captivity, for the 
marriage of Ruth, who is a Moabitess, to Boaz, is 
mentioned as if it were a matter of course, with 
no hint of censure. In the latter days of Israel 
such an alliance of a Jew with a foreigner would 
have been regarded as highly reprehensible. In- 
deed the Deuteronomic law most stringently for- 
bids all social relations with that particular tribe 
to which Ruth belonged. "An Ammonite or a 
Moabite shall not enter into the assembly of the 
Lord ; even to the tenth generation shall none 
belonging to them enter into the assembly of the 
Lord for ever. . . . Thou shalt not seek their 
peace nor their prosperity all thy days for ever." 
(Deut. xxiii. 3, 6.) But Ruth, the Moabitess, be- 
comes the wife of one of the chief men of Bethle- 
hem, with the applause of all the Bethlehemites, 
and the highest approval of the author of this 
narrative ; nay, she becomes, in the fourth gener- 
ation, the ancestress of the greatest of all the 
kings of Israel. This certainly shows that the 
people of Bethlehem did not know of the Deuter- 
onomic law, for they were a God-fearing and a 
law-abiding people ; and it also makes it probable 
that the incident occurred, and that the book 



86 WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

which describes the incident was written, before 
this part of the Deuteronomic code was in exist- 
ence. It is therefore valuable, not only as throw- 
ing light on the life of the people at that early 
period, but also as illustrating the growth of the 
pentateuchal literature. 

The two Books of Samuel and the two Books of 
Kings appear in the Septuagint and in the Latin 
Vulgate as one work in four volumes, — they are 
called the Four Books of Kings. In the recent 
Hebrew Bibles they are divided, however, as in 
our Bible, and bear the same names. They con- 
stitute, it is true, a continuous history ; but the 
supposition that they were all written at one time 
and by one author is scarcely credible. The 
standpoint of the writer of the Kings is consid- 
erably shifted from that occupied by the writer of 
Samuel ; we find ourselves in a new circle of ideas 
when we pass from the one book to the other. 

The Books of Samuel are generally ascribed to 
Samuel as their author. This is a fair sample of 
that lazy traditionalism which Christian opinion 
has been constrained to follow. There is not the 
slightest reason for believing that the Books of 
Samuel were written by Samuel any more than 
that the Odyssey was written by Ulysses, or the 
./Eneid by -Eneas, or Bruce's Address by Bruce, 
or Paracelsus by Paracelsus, or St. Simeon Sty- 
lites by Simeon himself. Even in Bible books 
we do not hold that the Book of Esther was writ- 
ten by Esther, or the Book of Ruth by Ruth, or 



THE EARLIER HEBREW HISTORIES. 87 

the Book of Job by Job, or the Books of Timothy 
by Timothy. The fact that Samuel's name is 
given to the book proves nothing as to its au- 
thorship. It may have been called Samuel be- 
cause it begins with the story of Samuel. The 
Hebrews were apt to name their books by some 
word or fact at the beginning of them, as we have 
seen in their naming of the books of the Penta- 
teuch. 

It is true that certain facts are mentioned in 
this book of which Samuel would have better 
knowledge than any one else ; and he is said to 
have made a record of certain events. (1 Sam. 
x. 25.) But his death is related in the first verse 
of the twenty-fifth chapter of First Samuel ; and 
it is certain, therefore, that considerably more 
than half of the document ascribed to him must 
have been written by some one else. 

As to the name of the writer we are wholly 
ignorant, and it is not easy to determine the date 
at which he wrote. If we regarded this as a con- 
tinuous history from the hand of one writer, we 
should be compelled to ascribe it to a date some- 
what later than the separation of the two king- 
doms ; for in 1 Sam. xxvii. 6, we read of the pres- 
ent made by the king of Gath to David of the 
city of Ziklag, at the time when David was hiding 
from Saul ; " wherefore/' it is added, " Ziklag per- 
taineth unto the kings of Judah even unto this, 
day." Now there were no "kings of Judah" 
until after the ten tribes seceded ; Rehoboam wjas 



88 WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

the first of the kings of Judah, therefore this 
must have been written after the time of Reho- 
boam. Doubtless this sentence was written after 
that time ; and in all probability the books of 
Samuel did not receive their present form until 
some time after the secession of the ten tribes. 
The materials from which the writer composed 
the book are hinted at here and there ; it is al- 
most certain that here, as in the other books, old 
documents are combined by the author, and not 
always with the best editorial care. Several old 
songs are quoted : the " Song of Hannah/' Da- 
vid's exquisite lament over Saul and Jonathan, 
which is known as " The Bow ; " David's "Song 
of Deliverance," after he had escaped from Saul, 
which we find in the Psalter as the Eighteenth 
Psalm, and " The Last Words of David." The 
books contain a vivid narrative of the times of 
Eli and Samuel and Saul, and of the splendid 
reign of King David. No portion of the Old 
Testament has been more diligently studied, and 
the moral teaching of the books is clear and lumi- 
nous. The ethical thoroughness of these writings 
when compared with almost any literature of 
equal antiquity is always remarkable. Take, as 
an example, the treatment which David receives 
at the hands of the writer. He is a great hero, 
the one grand figure of Hebrew history ; but 
there is nothing of the demigod in this picture 
of him ; his faults and crimes are exposed and 
denounced, and he gains our respect only by his 



THE EARLIER HEBREW HISTORIES. 89 

hearty contrition and amendment. Verily the 
God of Israel whom this book reveals is a God 
who loveth righteousness and hateth iniquity. 

The Books of the Kings were originally one 
book, and ought to have remained one. The 
manuscript was torn in two by some scribe or 
copyist long ago, in the middle of the story of 
the reign of King Ahaziah ; the first word of 
Second Kings goes on without so much as tak- 
ing breath, from the last word of First Kings. 
There is no excuse for this bisection of the nar- 
rative ; it must be due to some accident, or to 
the arbitrary and unintelligent act of some person 
who paid no attention to the meaning of the doc- 
ument. As the Books of Samuel carry the his- 
tory from the birth of Samuel down to the end of 
David's reign, so the Books of the Kings take up 
the story in the last days of David and carry it 
on to the time of the Exile, a period of four hun- 
dred and fifty years. The name of the author is 
concealed from us ; there is a tradition, not alto- 
gether improbable, that it was written by the 
Prophet Jeremiah. If you will compare the last 
chapter of Second Kings with the last chapter of 
Jeremiah, you will discover that they are almost 
verbally the same. Here, again, if Jeremiah was 
not the author, either writer may have copied the 
passage from the other, or both may have taken 
it from some older book. But this passage gives 
us a note of time. It tells us that Evil-Merodach, 
king of Babylon, in the first year of his reign, re- 



go WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

leased the captive king of Judah, Jehoiachin, from 
his long confinement, and gave him a seat at his 
own table. The book must have been written, 
then, after the beginning of the reign of Evil- 
Merodach ; and there is plenty of history to show 
that his reign began 561 B.C. And inasmuch as 
the book gives no hint of the return of the Jews 
from their captivity, which began in 538 b. c, we 
may fairly conclude that the book was written 
some time between those dates. Let us suppose 
that Jeremiah wrote it ; even he, as prophet of 
the Lord, certainly used the materials of history 
which had accumulated in the archives of the 
two nations. 

It is evident that, after the establishment of 
the kingdom, considerable attention was paid to 
the preservation of the records of important na- 
tional events. The kings kept chroniclers who 
not only preserved and edited old documents, but 
who wrote the annals of their own times. In 
1 Kings xi. 41, at the conclusion of the narrative 
of Solomon's reign, we read, "Now the rest of 
the acts of Solomon, and all that he did, and his 
wisdom, are they not written in the Book of the 
Acts of Solomon ? " For his history of Jeroboam 
the writer refers in the same way to " The Book 
of the Chronicles of the Kings of Israel," and for 
his history of Rehoboam to "The Book of the 
Chronicles of the Kings of Judah." The same 
is true of the reigns of other kings. These were 
not, of course, our Books of Chronicles, for these 



THE EARLIER HEBREW HISTORIES. 91 

were not written for two hundred years after the 
Book of Kings was finished. It is thus evident, 
as one modern writer has said, " that the author 
laboriously employed the materials within his 
reach, very much as a modern historian might 
do, and further that he was as much puzzled by 
chronological difficulties as a modern historian 
frequently is." * Prophet or not, he took the 
materials at his hands, and put them together 
in this history. 

The splendid but corrupt reign of the son of 
David ; the secession of the ten tribes under Jer- 
oboam ; the hostile relations of the two king- 
doms of Israel and Judah for two hundred and 
fifty years, by which both were weakened, and 
through unholy alliance^ corrupted, and the re- 
sult of which was the final destruction of both, 
are described in this book in a spirited and 
evidently veracious manner. The two great 
prophets, Elijah and Elisha, are grand figures 
in this narrative; much of the story revolves 
around them. As witnesses for the righteous 
Jehovah they stand forth, warning, rebuking, 
counseling kings and people ; the moral leader- 
ship by which Israel is chastened and corrected 
and led in the way of righteousness expresses 
itself largely through their ministry. The words 
of Lord Arthur Hervey, in Smith's " Bible Dic- 
tionary," none too strongly convey the histo- 
rian's sense of the value of this part of the Old 
Testament : — 

1 Hor ton's Inspiration and the Bible, p. 182. 



92 WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

" Considering the conciseness of the narrative 
and the simplicity of the style, the amount of the 
knowledge which these books convey of the char- 
acters, conduct, and manners of kings and people 
during so long a period is truly wonderful. The 
insight which they give us into the aspect of 
Judah and Jerusalem, both natural and artificial, 
with the religious, military, and civil institutions 
of the people, their arts and manufactures, the 
state of education and learning among them, 
their resources, commerce, exploits, alliances, the 
causes of their decadence, and finally of their 
ruin, is most clear, interesting, and instructive. 
In a few brief sentences we acquire more ac- 
curate knowledge of the affairs of Egypt, Tyre, 
Syria, Assyria, Babylon, and other neighboring 
nations than had been preserved to us in all the 
other remains of antiquity up to the recent dis- 
coveries in hieroglyphical and cuneiform monu- 
ments." 2 

The substantial historical veracity of these 
books has been confirmed in many ways by 
these very monuments to which Lord Hervey 
refers. And yet this substantial historical ac- 
curacy is found, as in other histories of the olden 
time, in the midst of many minor errors and dis- 
crepancies. It would seem as if Providence had 
taken the utmost pains to show us that the es- 
sential truth and the moral and religious value 
of this history could not be identified with any 
theory of verbal or even plenary inspiration. 
1 Vol. iii. p. 1 561, American Edition. 



THE EARLIER HEBREW HISTORIES. 93 

Take, for example, some of the chronological 
items of this record. Mr. Horton's clear state- 
ment will bring a few of them before us : — 

"The author seems to have been content, in 
dealing with an Israelite king, to give the date 
reckoned by the year of the reigning king in 
Judah just as he found it stated in the Israelite 
chronicles, and then to do the same in dealing 
with the dates of the reigning kings of Israel ; 
but he did not consider whether the two chroni- 
cles harmonized. We may take some illustrations 
from the latter part of the work. Hoshea began 
to reign in Israel (2 Kings xv. 30) in the twen- 
tieth year of Jotham the king of Judah. So far 
writes our author, following the records of the 
Northern Kingdom. For his next paragraph he 
turns to his records of the Southern Kingdom, 
and naively tells us that Jotham never reached 
a twentieth year, but only reigned sixteen years 
( xv - 33) \ but even this is not the end of the dif- 
ficulty; in chapter xvii. he goes back to the 
Northern Kingdom and tells us that Hoshea be- 
gan to reign, not in Jotham's reign at all, but in 
the reign of Ahaz, Jotham's successor ; and if 
now he had said, i in the fourth year of Ahaz/ 
we might see our way through the perplexity, 
for the fourth year of Ahaz would, at any rate, 
be twenty years from the beginning of Jotham's 
reign, though Jotham himself had died after 
reigning sixteen years ; but he says, not in the 
fourth, but ■ in the twelfth year of Ahaz king of 



94 WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

judah.' We may give it up, and exclaim with 
the Speakers commentator, 'The chronological 
confusion of the history, as it stands, is striking/ 
and then perhaps we may exclaim at the Speak- 
er's commentator, that he and the like of him 
have given us so little account of these unmis- 
takable phenomena, and the cause of them, in 
the history. 

"One other illustration may suffice. King 
Ahaz, according to one authority, lived twenty 
years and then came to the throne and reigned 
for sixteen years. (2 Kings xvi. 2.) At his death, 
therefore, Ahaz was thirty-six years of age. In 
that year he was succeeded by his son Hezekiah, 
who was twenty-five years of age. This would 
mean that King Ahaz was married at the age of 
ten, which, making all allowance for the earlier 
puberty of Eastern boys, does not seem proba- 
ble ; and the explanation is much more likely to 
be found in the chronological inaccuracies of our 
author, to which, if we have been observantly 
reading his book through, we shall by this time 
have become quite accustomed." 1 

Observe that we are not going to any hostile or 
foreign sources for these evidences of inaccuracy ; 
we are simply letting the book tell its own story. 
Such phenomena as these appear throughout this 
history. They lie upon the very face of the nar- 
rative. Probably few of the readers of these 
pages have noted them. For myself, I must con- 

1 Inspiration and the Bible, pp. 1 89-1 91. 



THE EARLIER HEBREW HISTORIES. 95 

fess that I read the Bible through, from cover to 
cover, several times before I was thirty years old, 
but I had never observed these inaccuracies. The 
commentators, for the most part, — the orthodox 
commentators, — carefully keep these facts out of 
sight. Sometimes they attempt, indeed, to ex- 
plain or reconcile them, but such explanations 
generally increase the incredibility of the narra- 
tive. The latest verdict of ultra-conservatism is 
that these dates and chronological notes are inter- 
polated by some later hand ; but this, too, is quite 
out of the question. The only true account of 
the matter is, that the author took these records 
from the Chronicles of the Kings of Judah and 
the Chronicles of the Kings of Israel, and pieced 
them together without noticing or caring whether 
they agreed. His mind was not fixed upon sci- 
entific accuracy of dates. He was thinking only 
of the great ethical and spiritual problems work- 
ing themselves out in this history, — of the ques- 
tion whether or not these kings "did that which 
was right in the sight of the Lord," and of the 
effects of their right doing and their evil doing 
upon the lives of the people. What difference, 
indeed, does it make to you and me whether Jo- 
tham reigned sixteen years or twenty years ? It 
seems to me that these inaccuracies are suffered 
to lie upon the face of the narrative that our 
thoughts may be turned away from these details 
of the record to the great principles of morality 
and religion whose development it reveals to us. 



96 WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

These errors which appear upon the surface 
are obvious enough to any careful reader. But 
other facts, most important and suggestive, are 
brought to light when we compare these narra- 
tives of Samuel and Kings as we find them in 
the Hebrew text with the same narrative in the 
Greek text, the Septuagint. The Old Testament, 
as we have seen, was translated into the Greek 
language, for the benefit of those Jews who spoke 
only Greek, early in the third century before 
Christ. Undoubtedly it was a pretty faithful 
translation at the time when it was made. But 
a careful comparison of the two texts as they 
exist at the present time shows that considerable 
additions have been made to both of them ; and 
that some changes and misplacements have oc- 
curred in both of them. Sometimes it is evident 
that the Hebrew is the more correct, because the 
story is more orderly and consistent ; and some- 
times it is equally evident that the Greek version, 
which, as you remember, was commonly used by 
our Lord and his apostles, is the better. This 
comparison gives us a vivid and convincing illus- 
tration of the freedom with which the text was 
handled by scribes and copyists ; how bits of nar- 
rative — most commonly legends and popular 
tales concerning the heroes of the nation — were 
thrust into the text, sometimes quite breaking 
its continuity ; they make it plain that that pre- 
ternatural supervision of it, for the prevention of 
error, which we have frequently heard about, is 



THE EARLIER HEBREW HISTORIES. 97 

itself a myth. It is in these books of Samuel 
and the Kings that these variations of the Sep- 
tuagint from the Hebrew text are most frequent 
and most instructive. 

In the story of David's introduction to Saul, 
for example, our version, following the Hebrew, 
tells us (1 Sam. xvi. 14-23), that when David was 
first made known to Saul he was " a mighty man 
of valor, and a man of war, and prudent in speech, 
and a comely person." He comes into Saul's 
household ; Saul loves him greatly, and makes 
him his armor-bearer. In the next chapter David 
is represented as a mere lad, and it appears that 
Saul had never seen or heard of him. Indeed, 
he asks his general, Abner, who this stripling is. 
The contradiction in these narratives is palpable 
and irreconcilable. When we turn now to the 
Septuagint, we find that it omits from the seven- 
teenth chapter verses 12-31 inclusive ; also from 
the 55th verse to the end of the chapter and the 
first five verses of the next chapter. Taking out 
these passages, the main difficulties of the narra- 
tive are at once removed. It appears probable 
that these passages were not in the narrative 
when it was translated into Greek, but that they 
embodied a current and a very beautiful tradi- 
tion about David which some later Hebrew tran- 
scriber ventured to incorporate into the text. 

In the Books of the Kings the variations be- 
tween these two versions are also extremely sug- 
gestive. You can see distinctly, as if it were 



98 WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

done before your eyes, how supplementary mat- 
ter has been inserted into the one text or the 
other, since the Greek translation was made. In 
the sixth chapter of First Kings, the Septuagint 
omits verses 11-14, which is an exhortation to 
Solomon, injected into the specifications respect- 
ing the temple building. Omit these verses, and 
the description goes on smoothly. Similarly in 
the ninth chapter of the same book the Septua- 
gint omits verses 15-25. This passage breaks 
the connection ; the narrative of Solomon's deal- 
ings with Hiram is consecutively told in the 
Greek version ; in the Hebrew it is interrupted 
by this extraneous matter. You can readily see 
which is the original form of the writing. 

Now what does all this signify ? Of course it 
signifies most distinctly that this history must 
not be judged by the canons of modern historical 
criticism. Mr. Horton quotes some strenuous 
advocate of the traditional theory of the Bible as 
maintaining that "when God writes history he 
will be at least as accurate as Bishop Stubbs or 
Mr. Gardiner ; and if we are to admit errors in 
his historical work, then why not in his plan of 
salvation and doctrine of atonement ? " It is this 
kind of reasoning that drives intelligent men into 
infidelity. For the errors are here ; they speak 
for themselves ; nothing but a mole-eyed dog- 
matism can evade them ; and if we link the great 
doctrines of the Bible with this dogma of the his- 
torical inerrancy of the Scriptures, they will all 
go dow r n together. 



THE EARLIER HEBREW HISTORIES. 99 

But what, after all, do these errors amount to ? 
What is the meaning and purport of this history ? 
What are these writers trying to do ? " It seems," 
says Mr. Horton, " as if their purpose was not so 
much to tell us what happened as to emphasize 
for us the lesson of what happened. It is applied 
history, rather than history pure and simple ; and 
on this ground we can understand the tendency 
to irritation which critical historians sometimes 
betray in approaching it. . . . The prophetic his- 
torian would never dream, like a modern his- 
torian, of writing interminable monographs about 
a disputed name or a doubtful date ; he might 
even take a story which rested on very doubtful 
authority, finding in it more that would suit his 
purpose than the bare and accurate statement of 
the fact which could be authenticated. The 
standpoint of the prophetic historian and of the 
scientific historian are wholly different ; they can- 
not be judged by the same canons of criticism. 
. . . To the prophetic eye the significance of all 
events seems to be in their relation to the will of 
God. The prophet may not always discern what 
the will of God is ; he may interpret events in a 
quite inadequate manner. But his predominant 
thought makes itself felt ; and consequently the 
study of these histories leaves us in a widely dif- 
ferent frame of mind from that which Thucy- ; 
dides or Mr. Freeman would produce. We do 
not feel to know, perhaps, so accurately about the 
wars between Israel and Judah as we know about 



100 WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

the wars between Athens and Sparta ; we do not 
feel to know, perhaps, so much about the mon- 
archy of Israel as we know about the Anglo- 
Norman monarchy ; but, on the other hand, we 
seem to be more aware of God, we seem to rec- 
ognize his hand controlling the wavering affairs 
of states, we seem to comprehend that obedience 
to his will is of more importance than any polit- 
ical consideration, and that in the long course of 
history disobedience to his will means national 
distress and national ruin. The study of scien- 
tific histories has its advantages ; but it is not 
quite certain that these advantages are greater 
than those which the study of prophetic history 
yields. Perhaps, after all, the one fact of his- 
tory is God's work in it ; in which case the scien- 
tific histories, with all their learning, with all 
their toil, will look rather small by the side of 
these imperfect compositions which at least saw 
vividly and recognized faithfully the one fact" 



CHAPTER V. 

THE HEBREW PROPHECIES. 

In the last chapter the opinion was expressed 
that the first books collected by Nehemiah, when 
he made up his "library," a century after the Ex- 
ile, were the writings of the prophets. We stud- 
ied the historical books first, because they stand 
first in the Hebrew Bible, and are there named 
the " Earlier Prophets ; " but the probabilities are 
that the prophetical writings proper, called by the 
Jews the " Later Prophets," were first gathered. 

When was this collection made ? If it was 
made by Nehemiah (and there is nothing to dis- 
credit the statement of the author of 2 Macca- 
bees that he was the collector), then it was not 
compiled until one hundred years after the Exile, 
or only about four hundred and twenty years be- 
fore Christ. Most of the prophets had written 
before or during the Exile. Joel, Hosea, and 
Amos had flourished three or four hundred years 
before this collection was made ; Isaiah, the great- 
est of them all, had been in his grave almost 
three centuries ; Micah, nearly as long ; Nahum, 
Habakkuk, and Zephaniah had been silent from 
one to two hundred years ; Jeremiah, who was 



102 WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

alive when the seventy years' captivity began, and 
Ezekiel, who prophesied and perished among the 
captives on the banks of the Euphrates, were 
more remote from Nehemiah than Samuel John- 
son and Jonathan Edwards are from us ; even 
Haggai and Zechariah, who came back with the 
returning exiles and helped to build the second 
temple, had passed away from fifty to one hun- 
dred years before the time of Nehemiah. Mala- 
chi alone, — " The Messenger," — and the last of 
the prophets, may have been alive when the com- 
pilation of the prophetic writings was made. 

It may be safely conjectured that the Jews, al- 
though they had never possessed any collection 
of the books of the prophets, had known some- 
thing of their contents. Several of the prophets 
had foretold the desolation and the captivity, and 
there had been abundant time during the Exile 
to recall the words they had spoken and to wish 
that their fathers had heeded them. These re- 
membered words of the prophets, passing from 
lip to lip, would thus have acquired peculiar sa- 
credness. It seems clear, also, that copies of 
these books must have been kept, — perhaps in 
the schools of the prophets ; for the later pro- 
phets quote, verbally, from the earlier ones. It 
may, therefore, have been in response to a popu- 
lar wish that this collection of their writings was 
undertaken. Words so momentous as these ought 
to be sacredly treasured. Furthermore, there 
were reasons to apprehend that the holy flame of 



THE HEBREW PROPHECIES. 1 03 

prophecy was dying out. Malachi may have been 
speaking still, but there was not much promise 
that he would have a successor, and the expecta- 
tion of prophetic voices was growing dim among 
the people. 

The Levitical ritual, now so elaborate and cum- 
bersome, had supplanted the prophetic oracle. 
The ritualist is never a prophet ; and out of such 
a formal cult no words of inspiration are apt to 
flow. With all the greater carefulness, therefore, 
would the people treasure the messages that had 
come to them from the past. Accordingly these 
prophetic writings, which had existed in a frag- 
mentary and scattered form, were gathered into 
a collection by themselves. 

It must be admitted that when we try to tell 
how these writings had been preserved and trans- 
mitted through all these centuries, we have but 
little solid ground of fact to go upon. The Scrip- 
tures themselves are entirely silent with respect 
to the manner of their preservation ; the tradi- 
tions of the Jews are wholly worthless. We must 
not imagine that these books of Isaiah and Jere- 
miah and Hosea were written and published as 
our books are written and published ; there was 
no book trade then through which literature could 
be marketed, and no subscription agencies hawk- 
ing books from door to door. You must not im- 
agine that every family in Judea had a copy of 
Isaiah's Works, — nor even that a copy could be 
found in every village ; it is possible that there 



104 WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

were not, when the people were carried into cap- 
tivity, more than a few dozen copies of these 
prophecies in existence, and these were in the 
hands of some of the prophets or literary dignita- 
ries of the nation, or in the archives of some of 
the prophetical schools. The notion that these 
works were distributed among the people for 
study and devotional reading is not to be enter- 
tained. No such general use of the prophetical 
writings was ever conceived of by the Jews be- 
fore the Captivity. 

Indeed, many of these prophecies, as we call 
them, were not, primarily, literature at all. They 
were sermons or addresses, delivered orally to 
the individuals concerned, or to assemblies of the 
people. You can see the evidence, in many cases, 
that they must have been thus delivered. 

We speak of the " prophecy " of Isaiah, or the 
"prophecy" of Jeremiah; but the books bearing 
their names are made up of a number of " pro- 
phecies/ ' uttered on various occasions. The divi- 
sion between these separate prophecies is gener- 
ally indicated by the language ; in all Paragraph 
Bibles it is marked by blank lines. In each of 
these earlier prophetical books we thus have, in 
all probability, a succession of deliverances, ex- 
tending through long periods of time and pre- 
pared for various occasions. 

After the oracle was spoken to those for whom 
it was designed, it was written down by the pro- 
phet or by his friends and disciples, and thus pre- 



THE HEBREW PROPHECIES. 105 

served. This supposition seems, at any rate, 
more plausible than any other that I have found. 
Manifestly many of these prophecies were origi- 
nally sermons or public addresses ; it is natural to 
suppose that they were first delivered, and then, 
for substance, reduced to writing, that a record 
might be made of the utterance. 

It is sometimes alleged that these prophecies, 
as soon as they were produced, were at once 
added to a collection of sacred Scriptures which 
was preserved in the sanctuary. There was a 
"Book" or " Scripture," it is said, "which from 
the time of Moses was kept open, and in which 
the writings of the prophets may have been re- 
corded as they were produced." x 

The learned divine who ventures this conjec- 
ture admits that it would be as hard to prove it as 
to disprove it. My own opinion is that it would 
be much harder. If there had been any such of- 
ficial receptacle of sacred writings, the prophets 
were not generally in a position to secure the ad- 
mission of their documents into it. They were 
often in open controversy with the people who 
kept the sanctuary ; the political and the reli- 
gious authorities of the nation were the objects 
of their severest denunciations ; it is not likely 
that the priests would make haste to transcribe 
and preserve in the sanctuary the sermons and 
lectures of the men who were scourging them 
with censure. This national bibliotheca sacra in 

1 Alexander on Isaiah, i. 7, 



106 WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

which the writings of the prophets were depos- 
ited as soon as they were composed is the pro- 
duct of pure fiction. It was not thus that the 
prophetical utterances were preserved ; rather is 
it to be supposed that the pupils and friends of 
the prophet faithfully kept his manuscripts after 
he was gone ; that occasional copies were made 
of them by those who wished to study them, and 
that thus they were handed down from genera- 
tion to generation. 

When Nehemiah made his collection he found 
these manuscripts, in whose hands we know not, 
and brought them together in one place. We 
may presume that the writings of each prophet 
were copied upon a separate roll, and that the 
rolls were kept together in some receptacle in 
the temple. Most of these prophets had now 
been dead some hundreds of years ; the truth of 
their messages was no longer disputed even by 
the priests and the scribes ; their heresy was now 
the soundest orthodoxy ; the custodians of ortho- 
doxy would of course now make a place for their 
writings in the national archives. The priests 
have always been ready to build sepulchres for 
the prophets after they were dead, and to pay 
them plenty of post mortem reverence. 

The books of the prophets stand in the later 
Hebrew Bibles in the same order as that in which 
they are placed in our own ; they occupy a differ- 
ent place in the whole collection : they are in the 
middle of the Hebrew Bible, and they are at the 



THE HEBREW PROPHECIES. \OJ 

end of ours ; but their relation to one another is 
the same in both Bibles. This order is not chron- 
ological ; in part, at least, it seems to represent 
what was supposed to be the relative importance 
of the books. Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel are 
placed first, perhaps because they are longest, al- 
though several of the minor prophets are of ear- 
lier date than they. " Daniel " is not among the 
prophets in the Hebrew Bible ; the book which 
bears this name is one of the books of the third 
collection, — the Hagiographa, — of which we shall 
speak at another time. 

"When we follow further the same collection/' 
says Professor Murray, " we find Hosea immedi- 
ately following Ezekiel [although Hosea lived 
more than two centuries before Ezekiel] and in 
turn followed by Joel and Amos, mainly on the 
principle of comparative bulk. Haggai, Zecha- 
riah, and Malachi were placed at the end for rea- 
sons purely chronological, after the rest of the 
collection had been made up. We cannot see 
any clear or consistent reason for the position of 
Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, and 
Zephaniah, which stand together in the middle of 
the collection.' 1 

An examination of the chronological notes on 
the margin of our English Bibles (which are not 
always correct though they are approximately so) 
will show that these prophetical books are not ar- 
ranged in the order of time. It would be a great 
improvement to have them so arranged. Pupils 



108 WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

in the Sunday-schools who attempted a few years 
ago to follow the " International " lessons through 
these prophecies, seriatim, found themselves skip- 
ping back and forward over the centuries in a 
history-defying dance which was quite bewilder- 
ing to all but the clearest heads. We could un- 
derstand these prophecies much better if they 
were arranged in the order of their dates. And 
as no one supposes that the present arrangement, 
made by Jewish scribes, is in any wise inspired, 
there seems to be no good reason why the late 
revisers might not have altered it, and set these 
books in a historical and intelligible order. 

Who were these prophets and what was their 
function ? To give any adequate answer to this 
inquiry would require a treatise ; it is only in the 
most cursory manner that we can deal with it in 
this place. 

The prophet is the man who speaks for God. 
He is the interpreter of the divine will. By some 
means he has come to understand God's purpose, 
and his function is to declare it. Thus in Exo- 
dus iv. 16, Jehovah says to Moses, " Aaron thy 
brother . . . shall be thy spokesman unto the 
people, and it shall come to pass that he shall be 
to thee a mouth and thou shalt be to him as 
God." And again (vii. i), " See, I have made 
thee a god to Pharaoh, and Aaron thy brother 
shall be thy prophet." These passages indicate 
the Biblical meaning of the word. The prophet 
is the spokesman or interpreter of some superior 



THE HEBREW PROPHECIES. 109 

authority. In Classic Greek, also, Apollo is called 
the prophet of Jupiter, and the Pythia is the pro- 
phetess of Apollo. Almost universally, in the 
Old Testament, the word is used to signify an ex- 
pounder or interpreter of the divine will. 

"The English words 'prophet, prophecy, pro- 
phesying/ " says Dean Stanley, " originally kept 
tolerably close to the Biblical use of the word. 
The celebrated dispute about * prophesyings ' in 
the sense of ' preachings ' in the reign of Eliza- 
beth, and the treatise of Jeremy Taylor on 'The 
Liberty of Prophesying/ z. e., the liberty of 
preaching, show that even down to the seven- 
teenth century the word was still used as in the 
Bible, for preaching or speaking according to the 
will of God. In the seventeenth century, how- 
ever, the limitation of the word to the sense of 
prediction had gradually begun to appear. This 
secondary meaning of the word had by the time 
of Dr. Johnson so entirely superseded the origi- 
nal Scriptural signification that he gives no other 
special definition of it than ' to predict, to fore- 
tell, to prognosticate/ 'a predicter, a foreteller/ 
1 foreseeing or foretelling future events ; ' and in 
this sense it has been used almost down to our 
own day, when the revival of Biblical criticism 
has resuscitated, in some measure, the Biblical 
use of the word." 1 The predictive function of 
the prophet is not, then, the only, nor the promi- 
nent feature of his work. By far the larger por- 

1 History of the Jewish Churchy i. 459, 460. 



HO WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

tion of the prophetic utterances were concerned 
with the present, and made no reference to the 
future. 

The prophet exercised his office in many ways. 
Moses was a prophet, the first and greatest of 
the prophets ; but we have from him few predic- 
tions ; he interpreted the will of God in the en- 
actment of laws. Samuel was a great prophet ; 
but Samuel was not employed in foretelling fu- 
ture events ; he sought to know the will of God, 
that he might administer the affairs of the Jew- 
ish commonwealth in accordance with it. Elijah 
and Elisha were great prophets, but they were 
not prognosticators ; they were preachers of right- 
eousness to kings and people, and they delivered 
their message in a way to make the ears of those 
who heard them to tingle. And this, for all the 
prophets who succeeded them, was the one great 
business. The ethical function of these men of 
God came more and more distinctly into view. 

When Paul admonished Timothy (2 Tim. iv. 2) 
to " preach the word ; be instant in season, out 
of season ; reprove, rebuke, exhort with all long- 
suffering and teaching," he was calling on him 
to be a follower of the prophets. When kings 
became profligate and faithless, when priests 
grew formal and greedy, when the rich waxed 
extortionate and tyrannical, these men of God 
arose to denounce the transgressors and threaten 
them with the divine vengeance. They might 
arise in any quarter, from any class. They were 



THE HEBRE W PROPHECIES, 1 1 1 

confined to no tribe, to no locality, to no calling. 
Neither sex monopolized this gift. Miriam, Deb- 
orah, Huldah were shining names upon their roll 
of honor. To no ecclesiasticism or officialism did 
they owe their authority ; no man's hands had 
been laid upon them in ordination ; they were 
Jehovah's messengers ; from him alone they re- 
ceived their messages, to him alone they held 
themselves responsible. 

No such preachers of politics ever existed as 
these Hebrew prophets ; with all the affairs of 
state they constantly intermeddled ; bad laws and 
unholy policies found in them sharp and unspar- 
ing critics ; the entangling alliances of Israel with 
the surrounding nations were denounced by them 
in season and out of season. The people of their 
own time often stigmatized them as unpatriotic ; 
because they would not approve popular iniqui- 
ties, or refrain their lips from rebuking even 
"favorite sons," or the idols of the populace, they 
often found themselves under the ban of public 
opinion ; they lived lonely lives ; not a few of 
them died violent deaths. "Which of the pro- 
phets did not your fathers persecute ? " demanded 
Stephen, " and they killed them which showed 
before of the coming of the Righteous One ; of 
whom ye have now become betrayers and mur- 
derers.' ' 1 

The relation of the prophets to the political 
life of the Jewish people is brought out in a 

1 Acts vii. 52. 



112 WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

striking way by John Stuart Mill in his book on 
" Representative Government." In that chap- 
ter in which he discusses the criterion of a good 
government, he shows how the Egyptian hier- 
archy and the Chinese paternal despotism de- 
stroyed those countries by stereotyping their 
institutions. Then he goes on : — 

" In contrast with these nations let us consider 
the example of an opposite character, afforded 
by another and a comparatively insignificant Ori- 
ental people, the Jews. They, too, had an abso- 
lute monarchy and a hierarchy, and their organ- 
ized institutions were as obviously of sacerdotal 
origin as those of the Hindoos. These did for 
them what was done for other Oriental races by 
their institutions, subdued them to industry and 
order, and gave them a national life. But neither 
their kings nor their priests ever obtained, as in 
those other countries, the exclusive moulding of 
their character. Their religion, which enabled 
persons of genius and a high religious tone to 
be regarded and to regard themselves as inspired 
from heaven, gave existence to an inestimably 
precious unorganized institution, — the Order 
(if it may be so termed) of Prophets. Under the 
protection, generally though not always effectual, 
of their sacred character, the Prophets were a 
power in the nation, often more than a match 
for kings and priests, and kept up in that little 
corner of the earth the antagonism of influences 
which is the only real security for continued 



THE HEBREW PROPHECIES, 113 

progress. Religion, consequently, was not then 
what it has been in so many other places, a con- 
secration of all that was once established, and a 
barrier against further improvement. The re- 
mark of a distinguished Hebrew, M. Salvador, 
that the Prophets were in church and state the 
equivalent of the modern liberty of the press, 
gives a just but not an adequate conception of 
the part fulfilled in national and universal history 
by this great element of Jewish life ; by means 
of which, the canon of inspiration never being 
complete, the persons most eminent in genius 
and moral feeling could not only denounce and 
reprobate, with the direct authority of the Al- 
mighty, whatever appeared to them deserving of 
such treatment, but could give forth better and 
higher interpretations of the national religion, 
which thenceforth became part of the religion. 
Accordingly, whoever can divest himself of the 
habit of reading the Bible as if it was one book, 
which until lately was equally inveterate in 
Christians and unbelievers, sees with admira- 
tion the vast interval between the morality and 
religion of the Pentateuch, or even of the histor- 
ical books (the unmistakable work of Hebrew 
Conservatives of the Sacerdotal order), and the 
morality and religion of the Prophecies. Condi- 
tions more favorable to progress could not easily 
exist ; accordingly, the Jews, instead of being 
stationary like other Asiatics, were, next to the 
Greeks, the most progressive people of antiquity, 



114 WH0 WROTE THE BIBLE? 

and, joint with them, have been the starting- 
point and main propelling agency of modern civ- 
ilization. " 1 

Not only in the sphere of politics, but in that 
of religion also, were they constantly appearing 
as critics and censors. The tendency of religion 
to become merely ritual, to divorce itself from 
righteousness, is inveterate. Against this ten- 
dency the prophets were the constant witnesses. 
The religious " machine " is always in the same 
danger of becoming corrupt and mischievous as 
is the political " machine ; " the man with the 
sledge-hammer who will smash it and fling it into 
the junk-pile has a work to do in every genera- 
tion. This was the work of the Hebrew prophets. 
" I desired mercy, and not sacrifice/' cries Ho- 
sea, speaking for Jehovah. "I hate, I despise 
your feast days/' says Amos, "and I will not 
smell in your solemn assemblies, . . . but let judg- 
ment run down as waters, and righteousness as 
a mighty stream/' " Your new moons and your 
appointed feasts my soul hateth," proclaims Isa- 
iah ; " they are a trouble unto me ; I am weary 
to bear them. Wash ye, make you clean ; cease 
to do evil ; learn to do well. Is not this the fast 
that I have chosen, to loose the bands of wicked- 
ness, to undo the heavy burden, and to let the 
oppressed go free." 

This is, then, the chief function of the Hebrew 

1 Considerations on Representative Government, pp. 51-531 
American Edition. 



THE HEBREW PROPHECIES, 115 

prophet ; he is the expounder of the righteous 
will of God, not mainly with respect to future 
events, but with respect to present transgressions 
and present obligations of kings and priests and 
people. And yet it would be an error to overlook 
or disparage his dealings with the future. As 
a teacher of righteousness he saw that present 
disobedience would bring future retribution, and 
he pointed it out with the utmost fidelity. Any 
man who carefully studies the laws of God can 
make some predictions with great confidence. 
He knows that certain courses of conduct will 
be followed by certain con sequences.^ Some of 
the predictions of the Hebrew prophets were of 
this nature. Yet predictions of this nature were 
always conditional. The condition was not al- 
ways expressed, but it was always understood. 
The threatening of destruction to the disobedi- 
ent was withdrawn when the disobedient turned 
from their evil ways. The predictions of the 
prophets were not always fulfilled for this good 
reason. The rule is explicitly laid down by the 
Prophet Jeremiah: "At what instant I shall 
speak concerning a nation ... to destroy it ; if 
that nation . . . turn from their evil, I will re- 
pent of the evil that I thought to do unto them. 
And at what instant I shall speak concerning a 
nation ... to build and to plant it ; if it do evil 
in my sight, that it obey not my voice, then I 
will repent of the good wherewith I said I would 
benefit them." x 

1 Jeremiah xviii. 7-9. 



Il6 WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

And there is something more than this. In- 
stances are here recorded of specific predictions 
of future events, which came to pass as they 
were predicted, — predictions which cannot be 
explained on naturalistic principles. " Of this 
sort," says Bleek, "are the prophecies of Isaiah 
as to the closely impending destruction of the 
kingdoms of Israel and Syria, which he predicted 
with great confidence at a time when the two 
kingdoms appeared particularly strong by their 
treaty with each other, . . . besides the repeated 
predictions as to the destruction of the mighty 
hosts of Sennacherib, king of Assyria, which be- 
sieged Jerusalem, and the deliverance of the state 
from the greatest distress. Among these predic- 
tions, those in Isaiah xxix. 1-8, appear to me par- 
ticularly noteworthy, where he foretells that a 
long time hence Jerusalem should be besieged 
by a foreign host and pressed very hard, but 
that the latter, just as they believed they were 
getting possession of the city, should be scat- 
tered and annihilated ; for this prediction, from 
its whole character, appears to have been uttered 
before any danger showed itself from this quar- 
ter." 1 

Beyond and above all this is the gradual rise 
in Israel of that great Messianic hope, of which 
the prophets were the inspired and inspiring wit- 
nesses. We find, at a very early day, an expec- 
tation of a future revelation of the glory of God, 

1 Introduction to the Old Testament^ ii. 27. 



THE HEBRE W PROP HE CIES. 1 1 7 

dawning upon the consciousness of the nation, 
and expressing itself by the words of its most 
devout spirits. Even in prosperous days there 
was a dim outreaching after something better ; 
in times of disaster and overthrow this hope was 
kindled to a passionate longing. Of this Messi- 
anic hope, its nature and its fulfillment, no words 
of mine can tell so eloquently as these words of 
Dean Stanley : — 

" It was the distinguishing mark of the Jewish 
people that their golden age was not in the past, 
but in the future ; that their greatest hero (as 
they deemed him to be) was not their Founder, 
but their Founder's latest Descendant. Their 
traditions, their fancies, their glories, gathered 
round the head, not of a chief or warrior or sage 
that had been, but of a King, a Deliverer, a 
Prophet who was to come. Of this singular ex- 
pectation the Prophets were, if not the chief 
authors, at least the chief exponents. Sometimes 
he is named, sometimes he is unnamed ; some- 
times he is almost identified with some actual 
Prince of the present or the coming generation, 
sometimes he recedes into the distant ages. But 
again and again, at least in the late prophetic 
writings, the vista is closed by this person, his 
character, his reign. And almost everywhere 
the Prophetic spirit in the delineation of his 
coming remains true to itself. He is to be a 
King, a Conqueror, yet not by the common 
weapons of earthly warfare, but by those only 



Il8 WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

weapons which the Prophetic order recognized; 
by justice, mercy, truth, and goodness ; by suf- 
fering, by endurance, by identification of him- 
self with the joys, the sufferings of his nation ; 
by opening a wider sympathy to the whole hu- 
man race than had ever been offered before. 
That this expectation, however explained, ex- 
isted in a greater or less degree amongst the 
Prophets is not doubted by any theologians of 
any school whatever. It is no matter of con- 
troversy. It is a simply and universally recog- 
nized fact that, filled with these Prophetic im- 
ages, the whole Jewish nation — nay, at last, the 
whole Eastern world — did look forward with 
longing expectation to the coming of this future 
Conqueror. Was this unparalleled expectation 
realized ? And here again I speak only of facts 
which are acknowledged by Germans and French- 
men no less than by Englishmen, by critics and 
by skeptics even more than by theologians and 
ecclesiastics. There did arise out of this nation 
a Character as unparalleled as the expectation 
which had preceded him. 'Jesus of Nazareth 
was, on the most superficial no less than on the 
deepest view of his coming, the greatest name, 
the most extraordinary power that has ever 
crossed the stage of History.; And this great- 
ness consisted not in outward power, but pre- 
cisely in those qualities in which from first to 
last the Prophetic order had laid the utmost 
stress, — justice and love, goodness and truth. "* 

1 History of the Jewish Church, i. 519, 520. 



THE HEBRE W PROP HE C/ES. 1 1 9 

This is the great fact from which the student 
of the Old Testament must never remove his 
attention. That this wonderful hope and expec- 
tation did suffuse all the utterances of the pro- 
phets is not to be gainsaid by any candid man. 
That the expectation assumed, as the ages 
passed, a more and more definite and personal 
form is equally certain. Isaiah was perhaps the 
first to give distinct shape to this prophetic 
hope. Ewald thus summarizes the Messianic 
idea in the writings of Isaiah : — 

"There must come some one who should per- 
fectly satisfy all the demands of the true religion, 
so as to become the centre from which all its 
truth and force should operate. His soul must 
possess a marvelous and surpassing nobleness 
and divine power, because it is his function per- 
fectly to realize in life the ancient religion, the 
requirements of which no one has yet satisfied, 
and that, too, with that spiritual glorification 
which the great prophets had announced. Un- 
less there first comes some one who shall trans- 
figure this religion into its purest form, it will 
never be perfected, and its kingdom will never 
come. But he will and must come, for otherwise 
the religion which demands him would be false ; 
he is the first true King of the community of the 
true God, and as nothing can be conceived of as 
supplanting him, he will reign forever in irre- 
sistible power ; he is the divine-human King, 
whose coming had been due ever since the true 



120 WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

community had set up a human monarchy in its 
midst, but who had never come. He is to be 
looked for, to be longed for, to be prayed for ; and 
how blessed it is simply to expect him devoutly, 
and to trace out every feature of his likeness. 
To sketch the nobleness of his soul is to pursue 
in detail the possibility of perfecting all religion ; 
and to believe in the necessity of his coming is 
to believe in the perfecting of all divine agency 
on earth. ,fl 

(jt/is ^precisely here that we_get at the heart^pf 
the Old Testament ; this wonderful fore-looking 
toward the Messianic manifestations of God upon 
the earth, which kindled the hearts of the people 
and found clearest utterance by the lips of its 
most inspired men, which binds this literature 
all together, histories, songs, precepts, allegories. 
This it is which reveals the true inspiration of 
these old writings, and which makes them, to 
every Christian heart, precious beyond all price.,) 

Such being the character of these prophetic 
books, let us glance for a moment at a few of 
them, merely for the purpose of locating the 
prophecy in the history, and of discerning, when 
it is possible, the providential causes which called 
it forth. 

It is difficult to tell which of these fifteen pro- 
phets, whose utterances are treasured in this col- 
lection, first appeared upon the scene. The prob- 
ability seems to be that the earliest of them was 

1 The History of 'Israel \ iv. 203, 204. 



THE HEBREW PROPHECIES. 121 

Joel. Opinions differ widely ; I cannot discuss 
them nor even cite them ; but the old theory that 
Joel lived and preached about eight hundred and 
seventy-five years before Christ does not seem to 
me to be invalidated by modern criticism. He 
was a native of the Southern Kingdom ; and at 
the time we have named, the King of Judea was 
Joash, whose dramatic elevation to the throne in 
his seventh year, by Jehoiada the priest, is nar- 
rated in the Book of Kings. It was a time of dis- 
turbance and disaster in Judah and Jerusalem ; 
the boy-king was but a nominal ruler ; the regent 
was Jehoiada ; and incursions of the surrounding 
tribes, who carried away the people and sold them 
as slaves, kept the land in a constant state of 
alarm. Worse than this was the visitation of 
locusts, continuing, as it would seem, for several 
years, by which the country was stripped and 
devastated. This visitation furnishes the theme 
of the short discourse which is here reported. 
The description of the march of the locusts over 
the land is full of poetic beauty ; and the people 
are admonished to accept this as a divine chas- 
tisement for their sins, and to do the works meet 
for repentance. Then comes the promise of the 
divine forgiveness, and of that great gift of the 
Spirit, whose fulfillment Peter claimed on the day 
of Pentecost : " In the midst of the deepest woes 
which then afflicted the kingdom," says Ewald, 
" his great soul grasped all the more powerfully 
the eternal hope of the true community, and im- 



122 WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

pressed it all the more indelibly upon his people, 
alike by the fiery glow of his clear insight and 
the entrancing beauty of his passionate utter- 
ance. ,, 1 

The next prophet in the order of time is un- 
doubtedly Amos. He tells us that he lived in 
the days of Uzziah, King of Judah, about seventy 
years after Joel. He was a herdsman of Tekoa, 
a small city of Judah, twelve miles south of Jeru- 
salem. In these days the Northern Kingdom 
was far more prosperous and powerful than the 
Southern ; under Jeroboam II. Israel had be- 
come rich and luxurious ; and the prophet was 
summoned, as he declares, by the call of Jehovah 
himself to leave his herds upon the Judean hills, 
and betake himself to the Northern Kingdom, 
there to bear witness against the pride and op- 
pression of its people. This messenger and in- 
terpreter of Jehovah to his people is a poor man, 
a laboring man ; but he knows whose commission 
he bears, and he is not afraid. Stern and terri- 
ble are the woes that fall from his lips : the words 
vibrate yet with the energy of his righteous 
wrath. 

" Ye that put far away the evil day, and cause 
the seat of violence to come near ; that lie upon 
beds of ivory, and stretch themselves upon their 
couches, and eat the lambs out of the flock, and 
the calves out of the midst of the stall ; that sing 
idle songs to the sound of the viol ; that devise 

1 The History of Israel, iv. 139. 



THE HEBREW PROPHECIES. 1 23 

for themselves instruments of music, like David ; 
that drink wine in bowls, and anoint themselves 
with the chief ointments ; but they are not grieved 
for the affliction of Joseph." 

Such luxury always goes hand in hand with 
contempt of the lowly and oppression of the poor ; 
it is so to-day ; it was so in that far-off time ; and 
this prophet pours upon it the vials of the wrath 
of God : — 

" Forasmuch therefore as ye trample upon the 
poor, and take exactions from him of wheat : ye 
have built houses of hewn stone, but ye shall not 
dwell in them ; ye have planted pleasant vine- 
yards, but ye shall not drink the wine thereof. 
For I know how manifold are your transgressions 
and how mighty are your sins ; ye that afflict the 
just, that take a bribe, and that turn aside the 
needy in the gate from their right. ,, 

It is no wonder that Amaziah, the priest of 
Bethel, writhed under the scourge of the herds- 
man prophet, and wanted to be rid of him : " O 
thou seer," he cried, "go, flee thee away into the 
land of Judah, and there eat bread, and prophesy 
there : but prophesy not again any more in 
Bethel. ,, But the prophet stood his ground and 
delivered his message, and it still resounds as the 
very voice of God through every land where the 
greed of gold makes men unjust, and the love of 
pleasure banishes compassion from human hearts. 

The nearest successor of Amos, in this collec- 
tion, seems to have been Hosea, who tells us in 



124 WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

the opening of his prophecy that the word of the 
Lord came unto him in the days of Uzziah, 
Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah, and 
in the days of Jeroboam, son of Joash, king of 
Israel. There is some doubt about the genuine- 
ness of this superscription ; but it was about this 
time, undoubtedly, that Hosea flourished. To 
which kingdom he belonged it is not known ; 
probably, however, to Israel, with whose affairs 
his teaching is chiefly concerned. He must have 
followed close upon the herdsman of Tekoa ; pos- 
sibly they were contemporaries. His prophecy, 
too, is a blast from the trumpet of the Lord our 
Righteousness. Such an indictment of a people 
has not often been heard. 

" Hear, the word of the Lord, ye children of 
Israel : for the Lord hath a controversy with the 
inhabitants of the land, because there is no truth, 
nor mercy, nor knowledge of God in the land. 
There is nought but swearing and breaking faith, 
and killing, and stealing, and committing adul- 
tery ; they break out, and blood toucheth blood.' ' 

Especially severe is the prophet in his denun- 
ciation of the priesthood. 

" They feed on the sin of my people, and set 
their heart on their iniquity. And it shall be, 
like people, like priest : and I will punish them 
for their ways, and will reward them their doings." 

These prophecies of Hosea are instinct with a 
severe morality ; the ethical thoroughness with 
which he chastises the national sins is unflinch- 



THE HEBREW PROPHECIES. 1 25 

ing ; but it is not all threatening ; now and again 
we hear the word of tenderness, the promise of 
the divine forgiveness : — 

" I will heal their backsliding. I will love them 
freely ; for mine anger is turned away from him. 
I will be as the dew unto Israel ; he shall blos- 
som as the lily, and cast forth his roots as Leb- 



anon." 



Micah follows Hosea, at an interval of perhaps 
fifty years. He lived in a little village of Judah, 
west of Jerusalem, and exercised his ministry in 
both kingdoms, testifying impartially against the 
wickedness of Jerusalem and Samaria, though 
the weight of his censure seems to rest upon the 
Judean capital. His strain is an echo of the out- 
cry of Amos and Hosea ; it is the same intense 
indignation against the violence and rapacity of 
the rich, against corrupt judges, false prophets, 
rascally traders, treacherous friends. For all 
these sins condign punishment is threatened ; 
and yet, after these retributive woes are past, 
there is promise of a better day. The great Mes- 
sianic hope here begins to find clear utterance ; 
the former prophets have seen in their visions 
only the restoration of the people of Israel ; to 
Micah there comes the anticipation of an indi- 
vidual Leader and Deliverer. 

"But thou, Bethlehem Ephratah, which art 
little to be among the thousands of Judah, out of 
thee shall one come forth that is to be ruler in 
Israel, whose goings forth are from old, from 



126 WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

everlasting. . . . And he shall stand and shall 
feed his flock in the strength of the Lord, in the 
majesty of the name of the Lord his God ; and 
they shall abide ; for now shall he be great unto 
the ends of the earth. ,, 

Thus slowly broadens the dawn of the Mes- 
sianic hope. 

The first part of the fourth chapter of Micah, 
which is a prediction of the glory that shall come 
to Zion in the latter day, is verbally identical with 
the first part of the second chapter of Isaiah. 
One of the prophets must have quoted from the 
other or else, as Dr. Geikie suggests, both copied 
from some older prophet. 

After Micah comes the greatest of the pro- 
phets, Isaiah. He appeared upon the scene in 
his native city of Jerusalem about the middle of 
the eighth century before Christ. His work was 
mainly done during the reigns of Ahaz, "the 
Grasper," one of the vilest and most ungodly of 
the Judean monarchs, and of Hezekiah, the good 
king, about a century and a half before the de- 
struction of Jerusalem. 

About this time Judea was constantly exposed 
to the rapacity of the great Assyrian power be- 
fore whose armies she finally fell ; sometimes her 
rulers entered into coalitions with the surround- 
ing nations to resist the Assyrian ; sometimes 
they submitted and paid heavy tribute. Egypt, 
on the south, was also a mighty empire at this 
time, constantly at war with Assyria ; and the 



THE HEBREW PROPHECIES. 1 27 

kings of Judah sometimes sought alliances with 
one of these great powers, as a means of protec- 
tion against the other. They proved to be the 
upper and nether millstones between which the 
Jewish nationality was ground to powder. It 
was in the midst of these alarming signs of na- 
tional destruction that Isaiah arose. Of the pro- 
phetic discourses which he delivered in Jerusalem 
we have about thirty ; his words are the words of 
a patriot, a statesman, a servant and messenger 
of Jehovah. He warned the kings against these 
entangling alliances with foreign powers ; he ad- 
monished them to stand fast in their allegiance 
to Jehovah, and obey his laws ; yet he saw that 
they would not heed his word, and that swift and 
sure destruction was coming upon the nation. 
And his expectation was not like that of the other 
prophets, that the nation as a whole would be 
saved out of these judgments; to him it was 
made plain that only a remnant would survive ; 
but that from that remnant should spring a noble 
race, with a purer faith, in whom all the nations 
of the earth should be blessed. Of the Messi- 
anic hope as it finds expression in these words of 
Isaiah I have already spoken. 

This Book of Isaiah contains thirty-one pro- 
phetic discourses, some of them mere fragments. 
There is reason for doubt as to whether they 
were all spoken by Isaiah ; when they were gath- 
ered up, two hundred years later, some utter- 
ances of other prophets may have been mingled 



128 WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

with them. Indeed it is now regarded as well- 
nigh certain that the last twenty-seven chapters 
are the work of a later prophet, — of one who 
wrote during the Captivity. Professor Delitzsch, 
in the last edition of his commentary on Isaiah, 
finally concedes that this is probable. The Book 
of Isaiah, he is reported as saying, "may have 
been an anthology of prophetic discourses by 
different authors ; that is, it may have been com- 
posed partly and directly by Isaiah, and partly 
by other later prophets whose utterances con- 
stitute a really homogeneous and simultaneous 
continuation of Isaian prophecy. These later 
prophets so closely resemble Isaiah in prophetic 
vision that posterity might, on that account, well 
identify them with him, — his name being the 
correct common denominator for this collection 
of prophecies." 

These words of the most distinguished and de- 
vout of the Old Testament critics throw a flood 
of light on the structure not only of Isaiah, but 
of other Old Testament writings ; they show 
how unlike our own were the primitive ideas of 
authorship ; and how the Pentateuch, for exam- 
ple, drawn from many sources and revised by 
many editors, could be called the law of Moses ; 
how his name may have been the " common de- 
nominator " of all that collection of laws. 

I have shown, perhaps, in these hasty notices, 
something of the nature and purpose of five of 
these prophetic books. Of the rest I must speak 



THE HEBREW PROPHECIES. 1 29 

but a single word, for the time fails me to tell of 
Zephaniah, who in the time of good King Josiah, 
denounced the idolatry of the people, the injus- 
tice of its princes and judges, and the corruption 
of its prophets and priests, threatened the rebel- 
lious with extermination, and promised to the 
remnant an enduring peace ; of Jeremiah, who 
about the same time first lifted up his voice, and 
continued speaking until after the destruction of 
Jerusalem, — from whose writings we may derive 
a more complete and intelligible account of the 
period preceding the Exile than from any other 
source; of Nahum, who, just before the fall of 
Jerusalem, uttered his oracle against Nineveh ; 
of Obadiah, who, after the fall of the holy city, 
launched his thunderbolts against the perfidious 
Edomites because of their rejoicing over the fate 
of Jerusalem ; of Ezekiel, the prophet of the 
Exile, who wrote among the captives by the rivers 
of Babylon ; of Haggai and Zechariah, who came 
back with the returning exiles, and whose cour- 
ageous voices cheered the laborers who wrought 
to restore the city and the temple ; of Malachi, 
whose pungent reproofs of the people for their 
lack of consecration followed the erection of the 
second temple, and closed the collection of the 
Hebrew prophets. 

The limits of this small volume forbid us to 
enter upon several interesting critical inquiries re- 
specting the component parts of Isaiah and Zech- 
ariah, and especially the matter of the varia- 



130 WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

tions of the Septuagint from the Hebrew text in 
the Book of Jeremiah. In this last named book 
we find the same phenomena that we encountered 
in our study of Samuel and The Kings : the 
Greek version differs considerably from the He- 
brew; a comparison of the two illustrates, as 
nothing else can do, the processes through which 
the text of these old documents has passed, and 
the freedom with which they have been handled 
by scribes and copyists. The Hebrew text, from 
which our English version was made, is gener- 
ally better than the Greek ; but there are several 
cases in which the Greek is manifestly more ac- 
curate. 

There is one book, reckoned among these 
minor prophets, of which I have not spoken, and 
to which I ought to make some reference. That 
is the book of Jonah. 

It is found among the minor prophets, but it is 
not in any sense prophetical ; it is neither a ser- 
mon nor a prediction ; it is a narrative. Prob- 
ably it was placed by the Jews among these pro- 
phetical books because Jonah was a prophet. But 
this book was not written by Jonah ; there is not 
a word in the book which warrants the belief 
tha the was its author. It is a story about Jonah, 
told by somebody else long after Jonah's day. 
Jonah, the son of Amittai, was a prophet of the 
Northern Kingdom in the days of Jeroboam II., 
far back in the ninth century. The only refer- 
ence to him contained in the Old Testament is 



THE HEBREW PROPHECIES. 131 

found in 2 Kings xiv. 25. But this book was 
almost certainly written long after the destruction 
of Nineveh, which took place two hundred years 
later. One reason for this belief is in the fact 
that the writer of the book feels it necessary to 
explain what kind of a city Nineveh was. He 
stops in the midst of his story to say : " Now 
Nineveh was an exceeding great city of three 
days' journey." That explanation would have 
been superfluous anywhere in Israel in the days 
of Jeroboam II., and the past tense indicates that 
it was written by one who was looking back to a 
city no longer in existence. "Nineveh was." 
The character of the Hebrew also favors the 
theory of a later date for the book. We have, 
therefore, a tale that was told about Jonah prob- 
ably three or four hundred years after his day. 

Is it a true tale, or is it a work of didactic fic- 
tion ? I believe that it is the latter. It is a very 
suggestive apologue, full of moral beauty and 
spiritual power, designed to convey several im- 
portant lessons to the minds of the Jewish peo- 
ple. I cannot regard it as the actual experience 
of a veritable prophet of God, because I can 
hardly imagine that such a prophet could have 
supposed, as the Jonah of this tale is said to have 
supposed, that by getting out of the bounds of 
the Kingdom of Israel, he would get out of the 
sight of Jehovah. This is precisely what this 
Jonah of the story undertook to do. When he 
was bidden to go to Nineveh and cry against it, 



132 WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

" he rose up to flee unto Tarshish from the pres- 
ence of the Lord ; and he went down to Joppa, 
and found a ship going to Tarshish : so he paid 
the fare thereof, and went down into it, to go with 
them unto Tarshish from the presence of the 
Lord" (ch. i. 3). Is this actual history ? Is this 
the belief of a genuine prophet of the Lord ? 
What sort of a prophet is he who holds ideas as 
crude as this concerning the Being with whom 
he is in constant communication and from whom 
he receives his messages ? If Jonah did entertain 
this belief, then it is not likely that he can teach 
us anything about God which it is important that 
we should know. 

Thus, without touching the miraculous features 
of the story, we have sound reasons for believing 
that this cannot be the actual experience of any 
veritable prophet of God ; that it is not history, 
but fiction. Why not? Can any one who has 
read the parable of the Prodigal Son or the Good 
Samaritan doubt that fiction may be used in Sa- 
cred Scripture for the highest purpose ? 

But it is argued that the references to this 
story which are found in the words of Christ au- 
thenticate the story. Our Lord, in Matt. xii. 
39-42, refers to this book. He speaks of the 
repentance of the Ninevites under the preaching 
of Jonah as a rebuke to the Jews who had heard 
the word of life from him and had not repented ; 
and he uses these words : " An evil and adulter- 
ous generation seeketh a sign ; and there shall no 



THE HEBREW PROPHECIES. 1 33 

sign be given to it but the sign of Jonah the 
prophet : for as Jonah was three days and three 
nights in the belly of the whale ; so shall the Son 
of man be three days and three nights in the 
heart of the earth." 

This confirms, say the orthodox commentators, 
the historical accuracy of the story of Jonah. 
" If," says Canon Liddon, " he would put his 
finger on a fact in past Jewish history which, by 
its admitted reality, would warrant belief in his 
own resurrection, he points to Jonah's being 
three days and three nights in the belly of the 
whale." This use of the incident by our Lord 
clearly authenticates the incident as an actual 
historical fact. So say the conservative theolo- 
gians. And so say also the men who labor to 
destroy the authority of Christ. Mr. Huxley per- 
fectly agrees with Canon Liddon. He praises 
the Canon's penetration and consistency ; he 
agrees that there can be no other possible inter- 
pretation of Christ's words. The ultra-conserva- 
tive and the anti-Christian critics are at one in 
insisting that Christ stands committed to the 
literal truth of the narrative in Jonah. The in- 
ference of the ultra-conservative is that the nar- 
rative is historically true ; the inference of the 
anti-Christian critic is that Jesus is unworthy our 
confidence as a religious teacher; that one who 
fully indorsed such a preposterous tale cannot be 
divine. It is instructive to observe the ultra-con- 
servative critics thus playing steadily into the 



134 WH0 WROTE THE BIBLE? 

hands of the ' anti-Christian critics, furnishing 
them with ammunition with which to assail the 
very citadel of the Christian faith. It is a kind 
of business in which, I am sorry to say, they have 
been diligently engaged for a good while. *f 

Now I, for my part, utterly deny the proposi- 
tion which these allied forces of skepticism and 
traditionalism are enlisted in supporting. I deny 
that Jesus Christ can be fairly quoted as authen- 
ticating this narrative. I maintain that he used 
it allegorically for purposes of illustration, with- 
out intending to express any opinion as to the 
historical verity of the narrative. It was used in 
a literary way, and not in a dogmatic way. Our 
Lord speaks always after the manner of men, — 
speaks the common speech of the people, takes 
up the phrases and even the fables that he finds 
upon their lips, and uses them for his own pur- 
poses. He does not stop to criticise all their 
stories, or to set them right in all their scientific 
errors ; that would have been utterly aside from 
his main purpose, and would certainly have con- 
fused them and led them astray. He speaks al- 
ways of the rising and the setting of the sun, 
using the phrases that were current at that time, 
and never hinting at the error underneath them. 
He knew what these people meant by these 
phrases. If he knew that these phrases con- 
veyed an erroneous meaning, why did he not 
correct them ? So, too, he quotes from the story 
of the Creation in Genesis, and never intimates 



THE HEBRE W PROP HE CIES. 1 3 5 

that the six days there mentioned are not literal 
days of twenty-four hours each. He knew that 
those to whom he was speaking entertained this 
belief, and put this interpretation upon these 
words. Why does he not set it aside ? 

These questions may admit of more than one 
answer ; but, taking the very highest view of 
Christ's person, it is certainly enough to say that 
any such discussion of scientific questions would 
have been, as even we can see, palpably unwise. 
There was no preparation in the human mind at 
that day for the reception and verification of such 
a scientific revelation. It could not have been 
received. It would not have been preserved. It 
would only have confused and puzzled the minds 
of his hearers, and would have shut their minds 
at once against that moral and spiritual truth 
which he came to impart. And what we have 
said about scientific questions applies with equal 
force to questions of Old Testament criticism. 
To have entered upon the discussion of these 
questions with the Jews would have thwarted his 
highest purpose. In the largest sense of the 
word these Scriptures were true. Their sub- 
stantial historical accuracy he wished to confirm. 
Their great converging lines of light united in 
him. He constantly claimed their fulfillment in 
his person and his kingdom. Why, then, should 
he enter upon a kind of discussion which would 
have tended to confuse and obscure the main 
truths which he came to teach ? If, then, he re- 



136 WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

fers to these Scriptures, he uses them for his own 
ethical and spiritual purposes, — not to indorse 
their scientific errors ; not to confirm the methods 
of interpretation in use among the Jews. 

But Mr. Huxley insists, and all the ultra-con- 
servative commentators join him in insisting, that 
Christ could not, if he had been an honest man, 
have spoken thus of Jonah if the story of Jonah 
had not been historically accurate. This is the 
way he puts it : " If Jonah's three days' residence 
in the whale is not an ' admitted fact/ how could it 
' warrant belief ' in the i coming resurrection ' ? " 1 
Mr. Huxley is using Canon Liddon's phrases here ; 
but he is using them to confute those for whom, 
as he knows very well, Canon Liddon does not 
speak. Those who say that the story of Jonah is 
an " admitted reality " may, perhaps, be able to 
see that it "warrants belief " in the " coming res- 
urrection." To my own mind, even this is by no 
means clear. I do not see how the one event, even 
if it were an " admitted reality," could " warrant 
belief " in the other. No past event can warrant 
belief in any future event, unless the two events 
are substantially identical. The growth of an 
acorn into an oak in the last century " warrants 
the belief " that an acorn will grow into an oak in 
the present century ; but it does not " warrant the 
belief " that a city planted on an eligible site will 
grow to be a great metropolis. The one event 
might illustrate the other, but no conclusions of 

1 The Nineteenth Century, July, 1890. 



THE HEBREW PROPHECIES, 1 37 

logic can be carried from the one to the other. 
It is precisely so with these two events. There 
is a certain analogy between the experience of 
Jonah, as told in the book, and that of our Lord ; 
but it is ridiculous to say that the one event, if 
an " admitted reality," " warrants belief " in the 
other, — whether it is said by Mr. Huxley or 
Canon Liddon. Our Lord's words convey no 
such meaning. In truth, if we are here dealing 
with scientific comparisons, the one event, if taken 
as an " admitted reality," warrants disbelief in 
the other. What are our Lord's precise words ? 
"As Jonah was three days and three nights in 
the whale's belly, so shall the Son of man be three 
days and three nights in the heart of the earth. " 
We are told by Mr. Huxley and his orthodox 
allies that we must take this as a literal historical 
parallel, or not at all ; that if we treat it in any 
other way, we accuse our Lord of dishonesty. 
What, then, was the condition of Jonah during 
these three days and nights ? Was he dead or 
alive ? He was certainly alive, if the tale is history 
— very thoroughly alive in all his faculties. He 
was praying part of the time, and part of the time 
he was writing poetry. We have a long and 
beautiful poem which he is said to have com- 
posed during that enforced retirement from ac- 
tive life. It would appear that his release took 
place immediately after the poem was finished. 
If, now, these events are bound together with the 
links of logic, if the one event is the historic 



138 WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

counterpart of the other, the Son of man, during 
the three days of his sojourn in the heart of the 
earth, was not dead at all ! He was only hidden 
for a little space from the sight of men. He was 
alive all the while, and there was no resurrection ! 
It is to this that you come when you begin to 
apply to these parables and allegories of the 
Bible the methods of scientific exposition. This 
may be satisfactory enough to Mr. Huxley. I 
should like to know how it suits his orthodox 
allies. 

The fact is, that you are not dealing here 
with equivalents, but with analogies ; not with 
laws of evidence, but with figures of rhetoric : 
and it is absurd to say that one member of 
an analogy " warrants belief " in the existence 
of the other. There is no such logical nexus. 
The leaven in the meal does not " warrant be- 
lief " in the spread of Christianity, but it serves 
to illustrate it. The story of the Prodigal Son 
does not " warrant belief " in the fatherly love 
of God, but it helps us to understand something 
of that love, and it helps us precisely as much as 
if it had been a veritable history, instead of being, 
as it is, a pure work of fiction. 

"What sort of value/' asks Mr. Huxley, "as 
an illustration of God's methods of dealing with 
sin, has an account of an event that never hap- 
pened ? " Such an admonition, he says, is " mor- 
ally about on a level with telling a naughty child 
that a bogy is coming to fetch it away." Let us 



THE HEBREW PROPHECIES, 1 39 

apply this maxim to some of Mr. Huxley's homi- 
lies : — 

" Surely," he says in one of his " Lay Sermons," 
" our innocent pleasures are not so abundant in 
this life that we can afford to despise this or any 
other source of them. We should fear being 
banished for our neglect to that limbo where the 
great Florentine tells us are those who during this 
life wept when they might be joyful." 1 This 
limbo of Dante's is not, I dare say, an " admit- 
ted reality" in Mr. Huxley's physical geography. 
"What sort of value," therefore, has his refer- 
ence to it ? Is he merely raising the cry of 
bogy? He certainly does intend what he says 
as a dissuasive from a certain course of errone- 
ous conduct. I venture to insist that he has a 
real meaning, and that, although the limbo is a 
myth, the condition which he intends to illus- 
trate by his allusion to it is a reality. 

Once more : " I do not suppose that the dead 

soul of Peter Bell, of whom the great poet of 

nature says, — 

• A primrose by the river's brim 
A yellow primrose was to him, 
And it was nothing more,' 

would have been a whit roused from its apathy 
by the information that the primrose is a Dicoty- 
ledonous Exogen, with a monopetalous corolla 
and a central placentation." 2 

1 Lay Sermons and Addresses^ p. 92. 

2 Ibid. p. 91. 



140 WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

Does Mr. Huxley believe that Peter Bell was 
a historical person ? If he was not, how, in the 
name of biological theology, could his dead soul 
have been roused by any information whatever ? 
Yet these sentences of his have a real and valu- 
able meaning. It is evident that Mr. Huxley 
does understand the uses of allegory and fable 
for purposes of illustration ; that he can employ 
characters and situations which are not histori- 
cal, but purely imaginary, to illustrate the reali- 
ties which he is trying to present, — speaking of 
them all the while just as if they were historical 
persons or places, and trusting his readers to in- 
terpret him aright. Such a use of language is 
common in all literature. To affirm that our 
Lord could not resort to it without dishonesty 
is to deny to him the ordinary instruments of 
speech. 

" We may conclude, then," with Professor Ladd, 
u that the reference to Jonah does not cover the 
question whether the prophet's alleged sojourn in 
the sea monster is an historical verity ; and that 
it is no less uncritical than invidious to make the 
holding of any particular theory of the Book of 
Jonah a test of allegiance to the teachings of the 
Master." 1 

It is evident enough, as Professor Cheyne has 
said, that the symbolic meaning of the book was 
the most important part of it in the New Testa- 
ment times. But other and more obvious mean- 

1 The Doctrine of Sacred Scripture, i. 67. 



THE HEBREW PROPHECIES. 141 

ings are conveyed by the narrative. Indeed, 
there is scarcely another book in the Old Testa- 
ment whose meaning is so clear, whose message 
is so divine. Apologue though it is, it is full of 
the very truth of God. There is not one of the 
minor prophecies that has more of the real gos- 
pel in it. To the people who first received it, 
how full of admonition and reproof it must have 
been ! That great city Nineveh — a city which 
was, in its day, as Dr. Geikie says, " as intensely 
abhorred by the Jews as Carthage was by Rome, 
or France under the elder Napoleon was by Ger- 
many " — was a city dear to God ! He had sent 
his own prophet to warn it of its danger; and 
his prophet, instead of being stoned or torn 
asunder, as the prophets of God had often been 
by their own people, had been heard and his 
message heeded. The Ninevites had turned to 
God, and God had forgiven them ! God was no 
less ready to forgive and save Nineveh than Je- 
rusalem. What a wonderful disclosure of the 
love of the universal Father ! What a telling 
blow, even in those old days, at the " middle 
wall of partition " by which the Jew fenced out 
the Gentile from his sympathy ! 

And then the gentle rebuke of Jonah's petu- 
lant narrowness ! How true is the touch that 
describes Jonah as angry because God had for- 
given the Ninevites ! His credit as a prophet 
was gone. I suppose that he was afraid also, like 
many theologians of more modern times, that if 



142 WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

threatened penalty were remitted solely on the 
ground of the repentance of the sinners, the foun- 
dations of the divine government would be un- 
dermined. How marvelously does the infinite 
pity and clemency of God shine out through all 
this story, as contrasted with the petty consis- 
tency and the grudging compassion of man ; and 
how clearly do we hear in this beautiful narra- 
tive the very message of the gospel : " Let the^/ 
wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man 
his thoughts : and let him return to the Lord, and 
he will have mercy upon him ; and to our God, 
for he will abundantly pardon. For my thoughts 
are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my 
ways, saith the Lord." 

May I say, in closing, that the treatment which 
the Book of Jonah has received, alike from skep- 
tics and from defenders of the faith, illustrates, 
in a striking way, the kind of controversy which 
is raised by the attempt to maintain the infalli- 
bility of the Bible. The crux of all the critics, 
orthodox and heterodox, is the story about the 
fish. The orthodox have assumed that the nar- 
rative without the miracle was meaningless, and 
the heterodox have taken them at their word. In 
their dispute over the question whether Jonah 
did really compose that psalm in the belly of 
the fish, with his head festooned with seaweed, 
they have almost wholly overlooked the great 
lessons of fidelity to duty, of the universal di- 
vine fatherhood, and the universal human broth- 



THE HEBREW PROPHECIES. 143 

erhood, which the story so beautifully enforces. 
How easy it is for saints as well as scoffers, in 
their dealing with the messages of God to men, 
to tithe the mint, anise, and cummin of the lit- 
eral sense, and neglect the weightier matters of 
judgment, mercy, and truth which they are in- 
tended to convey ! 



CHAPTER VI. 

THE LATER HEBREW HISTORIES. 

After the Book of the Law had been revised 
by Ezra, and the Book of the Prophets had been 
compiled by Nehemiah, there still remained a 
body of sacred writings, not Mosaic in their ori- 
gin and not from the hands of any recognized 
prophet, but still of value in the eyes of the Jews. 
We cannot tell the time at which the work of 
collecting these Scriptures was begun ; possibly 
it was going on while the Books of the Prophets 
were being compiled. This third collection was 
called from the first by the Jews, "Ketubim," 
meaning simply writings ; the Greeks afterward 
called it by a name which has been anglicized, 
and which has become the common designation 
of these writings among us, "The Hagiographa," 
or the Holy Writings. The adjective holy was 
not a part of the Jewish title ; it would have over- 
stated, somewhat, their first estimate of this part 
of their Bible. For while the degree of sacred- 
ness attached to these books gradually increased, 
they were always held as quite inferior to the 
other two groups of Scriptures. For convenience 
the list of books in this collection may be here 
repeated : — 



THE LATER HEBREW HISTORIES. 145 

The Psalms. 

The Proverbs. 

Job. 

The Song of Solomon. 

Ruth. 

Lamentations. 

Ecclesiastes. 

Esther. 

Daniel. 

Ezra. 

Nehemiah. 

1 Chronicles. 

2 Chronicles. 

The arrangement is topical ; first, three poetical 
books, The Psalms, The Proverbs, and Job; then 
five so-called Megilloth, or Rolls, read in the later 
synagogues on certain great feast days, — The 
Song of Songs at the Passover, Ruth at Pente- 
cost, Lamentations on the anniversary of the 
burning of the temple, Ecclesiastes at the Feast 
of Tabernacles, and Esther at the Feast of Pu- 
rim ; lastly, the historical and quasi-historical 
books, Daniel, Ezra, Nehemiah, and the Chroni- 
cles. 

Of Ruth I have already spoken in its proper 
historical connection, taking it with the Book of 
Judges. 

In treating of the remaining books I shall not 
follow the order of the Hebrew Bible, which I 
have given above, but shall rather reverse it, 
treating first of the historical books, Ezra, Nehe- 



I46 WHO WROTE THE BIBLE ? 

miah, and the Chronicles, also of Esther and 
Daniel ; then, in a subsequent chapter, of the po- 
etical books, the Lamentations, the books attrib- 
uted to Solomon, — Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and 
Solomon's Song, — and finally of Job and the 
Psalms. 

The histories which, under the title of the 
" Earlier Prophets," are contained in the middle 
group of the Hebrew Scriptures, have been stud- 
ied in a former chapter. In this later group of 
writings we find certain other historical works 
which cover the same ground. In the words of 
Mr. Horton : — 

" Taking historical excerpts from the first six 
books of the Bible, and then going on in a con- 
tinuous narrative from the beginning of Judges 
to the end of the Second Book of Kings, we have 
a story — true, a story with many gaps in it, still 
a connected story — from the earliest times to 
the captivity of Judah. Then, starting from the 
First Book of Chronicles and reading on to the 
end of Nehemiah, we have, in a very compressed 
form, though enlarged in some parts, a complete 
record from Adam to the return from the Cap- 
tivity ; at the end of this long sweep of narrative 
comes the Book of Esther, which is a brief ap- 
pendix containing a historical episode of the Cap- 
tivity. Taking these two distinct histories, we 
have two lines of narrative, an older and a later, 
which run together up to the Captivity ; the 
older, though covering a shorter time, is much 



THE LATER HEBREW HISTORIES. 1 47 

the larger and fuller ; the later, very thin in most 
parts, becomes very full in its account of the 
Temple-worship and Temple-kingship at Jerusa- 
lem, and then continues the story alone up to the 
end of the Captivity, and the reestablishment of 
the Temple-worship after the return." 1 

The older history, contained in Samuel and 
Kings, breaks off abruptly in the time of the 
Captivity ; we know that it must have been writ- 
ten during the Exile, and could not have been 
written earlier than about 550 b. c. The later 
history, in Chronicles and Ezra-Nehemiah, begins 
with Adam, and goes on, by one or two genea- 
logical tables, for almost two centuries after the 
Captivity. In 1 Chronicles iii. 19, the genealogy 
of Zerubbabel, who came back with the captives, 
is carried on for at least six generations. Count- 
ing thirty years for a generation, the table ex- 
tends the time of the writing of this record to at 
least one hundred and eighty years after the re- 
turn of the exiles. This occurred in 538 b. c, 
and the book must therefore have been written 
as late as 350 b. c, or very nearly two centuries 
after the earlier history was finished. 

There are conclusive reasons for believing that 
the four books now under consideration, the two 
books of Chronicles, Ezra, and Nehemiah, were 
originally but one book. In the Hebrew Canon 
the Chronicles is now but one book ; and in the 
old Hebrew collections Ezra and Nehemiah were 

1 Inspiration and the Bible, pp. 159, 160, 



148 WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

but one book. It was in the Septuagint that they 
were first separated. Thus we have the four cer- 
tainly reduced to two. And it is not difficult, on 
an inspection of the documents, to reduce the 
two to one. If you will open your Bible at the 
last verses of Second Chronicles, beginning with 
the twenty-second verse of the last chapter, and, 
fixing your eyes on this passage, will ask some 
one to read to you the first three verses of the 
Book of Ezra, you will see how these two books 
were formerly one ; and how the manuscript was 
torn in two in the wrong place ; so that the Book 
of Chronicles actually ends in the middle of a 
sentence. The period at the end of this book 
ought to be expunged. 

The explanation of this curious phenomenon is 
not difficult. The last group of sacred writings, 
what the Jews call the Ketubim, was kept open 
for additions to a very late day. After this his- 
tory was written (Chronicles-Ezra-Nehemiah) the 
question arose whether it should be admitted into 
the canon. The first answer to this question 
evidently was : " We do not need the first part of 
the history, — the Book of Chronicles, — for we 
have the substance of it already in the Books of 
Samuel and Kings and in the earlier writings ; 
but we do need the last part of it, 'Ezra-Nehe- 
miah,' for this carries the history on beyond the 
Captivity, and gives the account of the return of 
the exiles and the rebuilding of the city and the 
temple/' So they tore the book in two, and put 



THE LATER HEBREW HISTORIES. 1 49 

the last part of it into the growing collection of 
"Ketubim," or " Writings." The careless divi- 
sion of the manuscript, not at the beginning of a 
paragraph, but in the middle of a sentence, made 
it necessary, of course, for the scribe to copy at 
the beginning of the Ezra-roll the words belong- 
ing to it which had been torn off ; but they were 
not erased from the first part, and have been left 
there, as the old historians say, "unto this day." 

By and by there were requests that this first 
part — the Chronicles — be admitted to the Ke- 
tubim. The priests and the Levites of the temple 
would be sure to urge this request, fQr the Chron- 
icles is the one book of the Old Testament in 
which their order is glorified ; and at length the 
request was granted ; the Chronicles were added 
to the collection, and as they went in last they 
follow Ezra-Nehemiah, although they belong, 
chronologically, before it. They stand to-day at 
the end of the Hebrew Bible, and thus testify, by 
their position, respecting the lateness of the date 
at which they were admitted to the canon. Thus 
the Hebrew Bible ends with an incomplete sen- 
tence. 

What this later history may have been called 
before it was torn in two we have no means of 
knowing ; but the Jews called the last part of it 
(which stands first in their collection) by the 
name of Ezra, and the first part of it (which is 
last in their canon) they named, " Events of the 
Times," or " Annals." In the Septuagint this 



I50 WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

book of the Chronicles was called " Paraleipo- 
mena," " Leavings/' " Things Left Over," "Sup- 
plements/' Jerome first gave it the name of 
" Chronicles," by which we know it. 

The name of the author of this book is un- 
known. The strong probabilities are that he was 
a Levite, connected with the temple service in 
Jerusalem. The Levites had charge of the pub- 
lic religious services of the temple, especially of 
its music ; and the fullness with which this writer 
expatiates upon all this part of the ritual shows 
that it was very dear to his heart. 1 Everything 
relating to the Levitical priesthood and its ser- 
vices is dwelt upon in this book with emphasis 
and elaboration ; as the histories of Samuel and 
the Kings are written from the prophetical stand- 
point, this is most evidently written from the 
priestly point of view. 

In these books of the Chronicles the author 
constantly points out the sources of his informa- 
tion. He tells us that he quotes from the " Book 
of the Kings of Judah and Israel/' from the 
" Acts of the Kings of Israel," and from " The 
Story of the Book of the Kings." The identity 
of these books is a disputed question. It is sup- 
posed by some critics that he refers to the Books 
of Kings in our Bible ; others maintain that he 
draws from another and much larger book of a 

1 See 1 Chron. vi. 31-48 ; xv. 16-24; xvi. 4-42 ; xxv. 2 Chron. 
v. 12, 13; vii. 6; viii. 14; xx. 19-21; xxiii. 13; xxix. 25-30; xxxl 
2: xxxiv. 12: xxxv. IK. 



'. XZ, X J , VX1. U, Vlll. X 

;; xxxiv. 12; xxxv. 15. 



THE LATER HEBREW HISTORIES. 15 I 

similar name which has been lost. The latter 
theory is generally maintained by the more con- 
servative critics ; and it is easier to vindicate the 
author s trustworthiness on this supposition ; 
yet even so there are serious difficulties in the 
case ; for it is hard to believe that he could have 
written these annals without having had before 
him the earlier record, and between the two are 
many discrepancies. The main facts of the his- 
tory are substantially the same in the two narra- 
tives ; but in minor matters the disagreements 
and contradictions are numerous. It is part of 
the purpose of this study to look difficulties of 
this kind fairly in the face ; it is treason to the 
spirit of all truth to refuse to do so. Let us ex- 
amine, then, a few of these discrepancies between 
the earlier and later history. 

In 2 Samuel viii. 4, we are told that in David's 
victory over Hadadezer king of Zobah, he took 
from the latter " a thousand and seven hundred 
horsemen." In 1 Chronicles xviii. 4, he is said 
to have taken " a thousand chariots and seven 
thousand horsemen." In 2 Samuel xxiv. 9, Da- 
vid's census is said to have returned 800,000 
warriors for Israel, and 500,000 for Judah. In 1 
Chronicles xxi. 5, the number is stated as 
1,100,000 for Israel, and 470,000 for Judah. In 
2 Samuel xxiv. 24, David is said to have paid 
Araunah for his threshing-floor fifty shekels of 
silver, estimated at about thirty dollars of our 
money ; in 1 Chronicles xxi. 25, he is said to 



152 WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

have given him " six hundred shekels of gold by 
weight," amounting to a little more than thirty- 
four hundred dollars. In 2 Chronicles xiv. i, we 
read that Asa reigned in the stead of his father 
Abijah, and that in his days the land was quiet 
ten years. Again in the ioth and the 19th 
verses of the following chapter we learn that 
from the fifteenth to the thirty-fifth year of Asa 
there was no war in the land. In 1 Kings xv. 
32, we are explicitly told that " there was war 
between Asa and Baasha king of Israel all their 
days/' In 1 Chronicles xx. the story of the tak- 
ing of Rabbah seems to be abridged from 2 Sam- 
uel xi., xii ; but the abridgment is curiously done, 
so that the part taken by David in the siege and 
capture of the city is not brought out ; and the 
whole narrative of David's relation to Uriah and 
Bathsheba, with the rebuke of Nathan and the 
death of David's child, is not alluded to. The 
relation of the two narratives at this point is sig- 
nificant ; it deserves careful study. One more 
curious difference is found in the two accounts 
of the numbering of Israel. In 2 Samuel xxiv. 
1, we read, "And the anger of the Lord was 
kindled against Israel, and he moved David 
against them, saying, Go, number Israel and 
Judah." In 1 Chronicles xxi., we read, "And 
Satan stood up against Israel and moved David 
to number Israel." The numbering in both nar- 
ratives is assumed to be a grievous sin ; and the 
penalty of this sin, which was David's, was vis- 



THE LATER HEBREW HISTORIES. 1 53 

ited upon the people in the form of a pestilence, 
which slew seventy thousand of them. I observe 
that the commentators try to reconcile these 
statements by saying that God permitted Satan 
to tempt David. I wonder if that explanation 
affords to any mind a shade of relief. But the 
older record utterly forbids such a gloss. " The 
anger of the Lord against Israel " prompted the 
Lord to "move David against them," and the 
Lord said, " Go, number Judah and Israel ! " It 
was not a permission ; it was a direct instiga- 
tion. Then because David did what the Lord 
moved him to do, "the Lord sent a pestilence 
upon Israel/' which destroyed seventy thousand 
men. We are not concerned to reconcile these 
two accounts, for neither of them can be true. 
Let us not suppose that we can be required, by 
any theory of inspiration, to blaspheme God by 
accusing him of any such monstrous iniquity. 
Let no man open his mouth in this day to declare 
that the Judge of all the earth instigated David 
to do a presumptuous deed, and then slew seventy 
thousand of David's subjects for the sin of their 
ruler. Such a view of God might have been held 
without censure three thousand years ago ; it 
cannot be held without sin by men who have the 
New Testament in their hands. This narrative 
belongs to that class of crude and defective teach- 
ings which Jesus, in the Sermon on the Mount, 
points out and sets aside. We may, nay we must 
apply to the morality of this transaction the prin- 



154 WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

ciple of judgment which Jesus gives us in that 
discourse, and say : " Ye have heard that it hath 
been said by them of old time that God some- 
times instigates a ruler to do wrong, and then 
punishes his people for the wrong done by the 
ruler which he himself has instigated ; but I say 
unto you that ' God cannot be tempted with evil, 
neither tempteth he any man ; ' moreover the 
ruler shall not bear the sin of the subject, nor the 
subject the sin of the ruler; for every man shall 
give account of himself unto God." It is by the 
higher standard that Christ has given us in the 
New Testament that we must judge all these 
narratives of the Old Testament, and when we 
find in these old writings statements which rep- 
resent God as perfidious and unjust, we are not 
to try to " harmonize " them with other state- 
ments ; we are simply to set them aside as the 
views of a dark age. 

Such blurred and distorted ideas about God 
and his truth we do certainly find here and there 
in these old writings ; the treasure which they 
have preserved for us is in earthen vessels ; the 
human element, which is a necessary part of a 
written revelation, all the while displays itself. 
It is human to err ; and the men who wrote the 
Bible were human. We may have a theory that 
God must have guarded them from every form of 
error, but the Bible itself has no such theory ; 
and we must try to make our theories of inspi- 
ration fit the facts of the Bible as we find them 
lying upon its pages. 



THE LATER HEBREW HISTORIES. 1 55 

The second portion of this history, the Book of 
Ezra-Nehemiah, presents fewer of these difficul- 
ties than the Book of Chronicles. It is a frag- 
mentary, but to all appearance a veracious record 
of the events which took place after the first re- 
turn of the exiles to Jerusalem. The first caravan 
returned in the first year of King Cyrus ; and 
the history extends to the last part of the reign 
of Artaxerxes Longimanus, — covering a period 
of more than a hundred years. The documents 
on which it is based were largely official ; and 
there is no doubt that considerable portions of 
the first book came from the pen of Ezra himself, 
and that the second book was made up in part 
from writings left by Nehemiah. The language 
of the second book is Hebrew ; that of the first 
is partly Hebrew and partly Chaldee or Aramaic. 
We read in the fourth chapter of Ezra that a cer- 
tain letter was written to King Artaxerxes, and 
it is said that " the writing of the letter was writ- 
ten in the Syrian character." The margin of the 
revised version says "Aramaic." We find this 
letter in our Hebrew Bibles in the Aramaic lan- 
guage. And the writer, after copying the letter 
in Aramaic, goes right on with the history in 
Aramaic ; from the twelfth verse of the fourth 
chapter to the eighteenth verse of the sixth chap- 
ter the language is all Aramaic ; then the histo- 
rian drops back into Hebrew again, and goes on 
to the twelfth verse of the seventh chapter, when 
he returns to Aramaic to record the letter of 



156 WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

Artaxerxes, which extends to the twenty-seventh 
verse. The rest of the book is Hebrew. With 
the exception of some short sections of the Book 
of Daniel, this is the only portion of our Old 
Testament that was not written originally in the 
Hebrew tongue. 

The contents of these two books may be 
briefly summarized. The first book tells us how 
the Persian king Cyrus, in the first year of his 
reign, issued a proclamation to the Jews dwelling 
in his kingdom, permitting and encouraging 
them to return to their own country and to re- 
build the temple in Jerusalem. The conquest of 
the Babylonians by the Persians had placed the 
captive Jews in vastly improved circumstances. 
Between the faith of the Persians and that of the 
Jews there was close affinity. The Persians were 
monotheists ; and " Cyrus/' as Rawlinson says, 
" evidently identified Jehovah with Ormazd, and, 
accepting as a divine command the prophecy of 
Isaiah, undertook to rebuild their temple for a 
people who, like his own, allowed no image of 
God to defile the sanctuary. . . . The foundation 
was then laid for that friendly intimacy between 
the two peoples of which we have abundant evi- 
dence in the books of Ezra, Nehemiah, and Es- 
ther." The words of the decree of Cyrus, with 
which the Book of Ezra opens, show how he re- 
garded the God of the Jews : " Whosoever there 
is among you of all his people, his God be with 
him, and let him go up to Jerusalem, which is in 



THE LATER HEBREW HISTORIES. 1 57 

Judah, and build the house of the Lord, the God 
of Israel, (he is God,) which is in Jerusalem.' ' 
The parenthetical clause is a clear confession of 
the faith of Cyrus that Jehovah was only another 
name for Ormazd ; that there is but one God. 

In consequence of this decree, a caravan of 
nearly fifty thousand persons, led by Zerubbabel, 
carrying with them liberal free-will offerings of 
those who remained in Babylon for the building 
of the temple, went back to Jerusalem, and in 
the second year began the erection of the second 
temple. With this pious design certain Samari- 
tans interfered, finally procuring an injunction 
from the successor of Cyrus by which the build- 
ing of the temple was interrupted for several 
years. On the accession of Darius, the prophets 
Haggai and Zechariah stirred up the people to 
resume the work, and at length succeeded in 
getting from the great king complete authority 
to proceed with it. In the sixth year of his 
reign the second temple was completed, and 
dedicated with great rejoicing. This closes the 
first section of the Book of Ezra. The rest of 
the book is occupied with the story of Ezra him- 
self, who is said to have been " a ready scribe in 
the law of Moses," and who, " in the seventh year 
of Artaxerxes, king of Persia," led a second cara- 
van of exiles home to Jerusalem, with great store 
of silver and gold and wheat and wine and oil 
for the resumption of the ritual worship of the 
Lord's house. The story of this return of the 



158 WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

exiles is minutely told ; and the remainder of 
this book is devoted to a recital of the matter 
of the mixed marriages between the Jewish men 
and the women of the surrounding tribes, which 
caused Ezra great distress, and which he suc- 
ceeded in annulling, so that these "strange wo- 
men," as they are called, were all put away. To 
our eyes this seems a piece of doubtful morality, 
but we must consider the changed standards of 
our time, and remember that these men might 
have done with the purest conscientiousness 
some things which we could not do at all. 

The Book of Nehemiah is in part a recital 
by Nehemiah himself of the circumstances of 
his coming to Jerusalem, which seems to have 
taken place about thirteen years after the com- 
ing of Ezra. He was the cupbearer of Arta- 
xerxes the king ; he had heard of the distress 
and poverty of his people at Jerusalem, and in 
the fervid patriotism of his nature he begged 
the privilege of going up to Jerusalem to re- 
build its walls. Permission was gained, and the 
first part of the book contains a stirring account 
of the experiences of Nehemiah in building the 
walls of Jerusalem. After this work was fin- 
ished, Nehemiah undertook a census of the re- 
stored city, but he found, as he says, "the book 
of the genealogy of them that came up at the 
first," — the list of families which appears in 
Ezra, — and this he copies. It may be instructive 
to take these two lists — the one in Ezra ii. and 



THE LATER HEBREW HISTORIES. 1 59 

the one in Nehemiah vii. — and compare them. 
After this we have an account of a great congre- 
gation which assembled " in the broad place that 
was before the water gate," when Ezra the scribe 
stood upon "a pulpit of wood" from early morn- 
ing until midday, and read to the assembled mul- 
titude from the book of the law. "And Ezra 
opened the book in the sight of all the people 
(for he was above all the people) ; and when he 
opened it all the people stood up, and Ezra 
blessed Jehovah the great God. And all the 
people answered, Amen, Amen, with the lifting 
up of their hands ; and they bowed their heads, 
and worshiped Jehovah, with their faces to the 
ground." Other scribes stood by, apparently to 
take turns in the reading ; and it is said that 
" they read in the book, in the law of the Lord dis- 
tinctly [or, " with an interpretation," Marg.], and 
they gave the sense, so that they understood the 
reading." From this it has been inferred that 
the people had already become, in their sojourn 
in the East, more familiar with Aramaic than 
with their own tongue, and that they were un- 
able to understand the Hebrew without some 
words of interpretation. It is doubtful, however, 
whether all this meaning can be read into this 
passage. At any rate, we have here, undoubt- 
edly, the history of the inauguration of the read- 
ing of the law as one of the regular acts of 
public worship. And this must have been about 
440 B. c. 



l6o WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

The narrative of the first complete and formal 
observance of the Feast of Tabernacles since the 
days of Joshua; the narrative of the solemn 
league and covenant by which the people bound 
themselves to keep the law ; the narrative of the 
dedication of the wall of the city, and the account 
of various reforms which Nehemiah prosecuted, 
with certain lists of priests and Levites, fill up the 
remainder of the book. 

Taking it all in all it is a very valuable record ; 
no historical book of the Old Testament gives 
greater evidence of veracity ; none excels it in 
human interest. The pathetic tale of the return 
of this people from their long exile, of the re- 
building of their city and their temple, and of the 
heroic and self-denying labors of Zerubbabel and 
Nehemiah, the governors, and Haggai and Zecha- 
riah, the prophets, and Ezra the scribe, with all 
their coadjutors, is full of significance to all those 
who trace in the history of the people of Israel, 
more clearly than anywhere else, the increasing 
purpose of God which runs through all the ages. 

That portions of the first book were written by 
Ezra, and of the second book by Nehemiah, is not 
doubted ; but both books were revised somewhat 
by later hands ; additions were undoubtedly made 
after the death of Nehemiah ; for one, at least, 
of the genealogies shows us a certain Jaddua as 
high priest, and tells us that he was the great 
grandson of the man who was high priest when 
Nehemiah came to Jerusalem. It is not proba- 



THE LATER HEBREW HISTORIES. l6l 

ble that Nehemiah lived to see this Jaddua in 
the high priest's office. It is probable that the 
last revision of the Bible was made some time 
after 400 b. c. 

I have now to speak, in the conclusion of this 
chapter, of two other books of this last group, 
concerning which there has always been much 
misconception, the Book of Esther and the Book 
of Daniel. Esther stands in our Bibles immedi- 
ately after Ezra-Nehemiah, while Daniel is in- 
cluded among the prophets. But in the Hebrew 
Bibles both books are found in the group which 
was last collected and least valued. 

I have styled these historical books ; are they 
truly historical ? That they are founded upon 
fact I do not doubt ; but it is, perhaps, safer to 
regard them both rather as historical fictions 
than as veritable histories. The reason for this 
judgment may appear as we go on with the study. 

The Book of Esther may be briefly summa- 
rized. The scene is laid in Shushan the palace, 
better known as Susa, one of the royal residences 
of the kings of Persia. The story opens with a 
great feast, lasting one hundred and eighty days, 
given by the King Ahasuerus to all the nabobs 
of the realm. It is assumed that this king was 
Xerxes the Great, but the identification is by no 
means conclusive. At the close of this monu- 
mental debauch, the king, in his drunken pride, 
calls in his queen Vashti to show her beauty to 
the inebriated courtiers. She refuses, and the 



1 62 WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

refusal ought to be remembered to her honor ; 
but this book does not so regard it. The sympa- 
thy of the book is with the bibulous monarch, 
and not with his chaste and modest spouse. 
The king is very wroth, and after taking much 
learned advice from his counselors, puts away his 
queen for this act of insubordination, and pro- 
ceeds to look for another. His choice falls upon 
a Jewish maiden, a daughter of the Exile, who has 
been brought up by her cousin Mordecai. Esther, 
at Mordecai's command, at first conceals her Jew- 
ish descent from the king. An opportunity soon 
comes for Mordecai to reveal to Esther a plot 
against the king's life ; and the circumstance is 
recorded in the chronicles of the realm. 

Soon after this a certain Haman is made Grand 
Vizier of the kingdom, and Mordecai the Jew re- 
fuses to do obeisance to him ; in consequence 
of which Haman secures from the king an edict 
ordering the assassination of all the Jews in the 
kingdom. His wrath against Mordecai being still 
further inflamed, he erects a gallows fifty cubits 
high, with the purpose of hanging thereon the 
testy Israelite. The intervention of Esther puts 
an end to these malicious schemes. At the risk 
of her life she presents herself before the king, 
and gains his favor ; then, while Haman's pur- 
pose halts, the king is reminded, when the annals 
of his kingdom are read to him on a wakeful 
night, of the frustration of the plot against his 
person by Mordecai, and learning that no recom- 



THE LATER HEBREW HISTORIES. 1 63 

pense has been made to him, suddenly deter- 
mines to elevate and honor him ; and the con- 
sequence is, that Haman himself, his purposes 
being disclosed by the queen, is hanged on the 
gallows that he had prepared for Mordecai, and 
Mordecai is elevated to Haman's place. The 
decree of an Eastern king cannot be annulled, 
and the massacre of the Jews still remains a legal 
requirement; yet Esther and Mordecai are per- 
mitted to send royal orders to all parts of the 
realm authorizing the Jews upon the day of the 
appointed massacre to stand for their lives, and 
to kill as many as they can of their enemies. 
Thus encouraged, and supported also by the 
kings officials in every province, who are now 
the creatures of Mordecai, the Jews turn upon 
their enemies, and slay in one day seventy-five 
thousand of them, — five hundred in the palace 
of Shushan, — among whom are the ten sons of 
Haman. On the evening of this bloody day, the 
king says to Esther the queen : " The Jews have 
slain five hundred men in Shushan the palace, and 
the ten sons of Haman ; what then have they 
done in the rest of the king's provinces ? [From 
this sample of their ferocity you can judge how 
much blood must have been shed throughout the 
kingdom.] Now what is thy petition ? and it 
shall be granted thee ; or what is thy request fur- 
ther? and it shall be done?" It might be sup- 
posed that this fair Jewish princess would be sat- 
isfied with this banquet of blood, but she is not ; 



1 64 WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

she wants more. "Then said Esther, if it please 
the king, let it be granted to the Jews which 
are in Shushan to do to-morrow also, according 
unto this day's decree, and let Hainan's ten sons 
be hanged upon the gallows." The request is 
granted ; the next day three hundred more Per- 
sians are butchered in Shushan the palace ; and 
the dead bodies of the ten sons of Haman, wel- 
tering in their gore, are lifted up and hanged 
upon the gallows, and all to please Queen Es- 
ther ! If a single Jew loses his life in this out- 
break, the writer forgets to mention it. It is idle 
to say that this is represented as a defensive act 
on the part of the Jews ; the impression is given 
that the Persians, by the menacing action of 
their own officials under Mordecai's authority, 
were completely cowed, and were simply slaugh- 
tered in their tracks by the infuriated Jews. 

As a memorial of this feast of blood, the Jew- 
ish festival of Purim was instituted, which is kept 
to this day ; and the Book of Esther is read at 
this feast, in dramatic fashion, with passionate re- 
sponses by the congregation. 

Is this history ? There is every reason to hope 
that it is not. That some deliverance of the Jews 
from their enemies in Persia may be commemo- 
rated by the feast of Purim is possible ; that pre- 
cisely such a fiendish outbreak of fanatical cru- 
elty as this ever occurred, we may safely and 
charitably doubt. The fact that the story was 
told, and that it gained great popularity among 



THE LATER HEBREW HISTORIES. 1 65 

the Jews, and by some of those in later ages 
came to be regarded as one of the most sacred 
books of their canon is, however, a revelation to 
us of the extent to which the most baleful and 
horrible passions may be cherished in the name 
of religion. It is precisely for this purpose, per- 
haps, that the book has been preserved in our 
canon. If any one wishes to see the perfect an- 
tithesis of the precepts and the spirit of the gos- 
pel of Christ, let him read the Book of Esther. 
Frederick Bleek is entirely justified in his state- 
ment that "a spirit of revenge and persecution 
prevails in the book, and that no other book of 
the Old Testament is so far removed as this is 
from the spirit of the gospel.' ' x For it is not 
merely true that these atrocities are here recited; 
they are clearly indorsed. There is not a word 
said in deprecation of the beastliness of the king 
or the vindictiveness of the hero and the heroine. 
It is clear, as Bleek says, " that the author finds 
a peculiar satisfaction in the characters and mode 
of acting of his Jewish compatriots, Esther and 
Mordecai ; and that the disposition shown by 
them appears to him as the right one, and one 
worthy of their nation." " Esther the beautiful 
queen," whose praises have been sung by many 
of our poets, possesses, indeed, some admirable 
qualities ; her courage is illustrious ; her patriot- 
ism is beautiful ; but her bloodthirstiness is terri- 
ble. 

1 Introduction to the Old Testament, i. 450. 



1 66 WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

As to the time when this book was written, or 
who wrote it, I am not curious. Probably it was 
written long after the Exile, but by some one who 
was somewhat familiar with the manners of Ori- 
ental courts. The name of God is not once men- 
tioned in the book ; and it seems like blasphemy 
to intimate that the Spirit of God could have had 
anything to do with its composition. It is abso- 
lutely sickening to read the commentaries, which 
assume that it was dictated by the Holy Ghost, 
and which labor to justify and palliate its fright- 
ful narrative. One learns, with a sense of re- 
lief, that the Jews themselves long disputed its 
admission to their canon ; that the school of 
Schammai would not accept it, and that several 
of the wisest and best of the early fathers of the 
Christian church, Athanasius and Melito of Sar- 
dis among the rest, denied it a place in sacred 
Scripture. Dr. Martin Luther is orthodox enough 
for me, and he, more than once, expressed the 
hearty wish that the book had perished. That, 
indeed, we need not desire ; let it remain as a 
dark background on which the Christian morality 
may stand forth resplendent ; as a striking ex- 
ample of the kind of ideas which Christians ought 
not to entertain, and of the kind of feelings which 
they ought not to cherish. 

The Book of Daniel brings us into a very dif- 
ferent atmosphere. Esther is absolutely barren 
of religious ideas or suggestions ; Daniel is full 
of the spirit of faith and prayer. Whether the 



THE LATER HEBREW HISTORIES. 167 

character of Daniel, as here presented, is a sketch 
from life or a work of the imagination, it is a 
noble personality. The self-control, the fidelity 
to conscience, the heroic purposes which are 
here attributed to him, make up a picture which 
has always attracted the admiration of generous 
hearts. 

" As in the story of the Three Children," says 
Dean Stanley, " so in that of the Den of Lions, 
the element which has lived on with immortal 
vigor is that which tells how, ' when Daniel knew 
that the writing was signed, he kneeled upon his 
knees three times a day and prayed and gave 
thanks to God, as he did aforetime/ How often 
have these words confirmed the solitary protest, 
not only in the Flavian amphitheatre, but in the 
ordinary yet not more easy task of maintaining 
the right of conscience against arbitrary power 
or invidious insult ! How many an independent 
patriot or unpopular reformer has been nerved 
by them to resist the unreasonable commands of 
king or priest ! How many a little boy at school 
has been strengthened by them for the effort, 
when he has knelt down by his bedside for the 
first time to say his prayers in the presence of 
indifferent or scoffing companions. . . . Shadrach, 
Meshach, and Abednego in the court of Ne- 
buchadnezzar, Daniel in the court of Darius, are 
the likenesses of 'the small transfigured band 
whom the world cannot tame/ who, by faith in 
the Unseen, have in every age ' stopped the 



1 68 WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

mouths of lions, and quenched the violence of 
fire/ This was the example to those on whom, 
in all ages, in spirit if not in letter, ' the fire had 
no power, nor was an hair of their head singed, 
neither were their coats changed, nor the smell of 
fire passed upon them ; ' but it was ' as it were a 
moist, whistling wind, and the form of the fourth, 
who walked with them in the midst of the fire, 
was like a Son of God.' " 1 

Was Daniel a historical person ? The question 
has been much disputed, but I think that we may 
safely answer it in the affirmative. It is true 
that in all these writings of the later period of 
Israel Daniel is mentioned but twice, both times 
in the Book of Ezekiel (xiv. 14 ; xxviii. 3). The 
first of these allusions is a declaration that a few 
righteous men cannot save a wicked city, when 
the decree of destruction against it has been 
issued; "though these three men, Noah, Daniel, 
and Job were in it, they should deliver but their 
own souls by their righteousness, saith the Lord 
God." The other is in a prophecy against the 
King of Tyre, in which he is represented as say- 
ing to himself that he is wiser than Daniel ; that 
there is no secret that can, be hidden from him. 
Whether these casual uses of the name of Daniel 
for purposes of illustration can be regarded as 
establishing his historical character may be ques- 
tioned. And it is a singular fact that we have 
not in Ezra, or Nehemiah, or Haggai, or Zecha- 

1 History of the Jewish Church, pp. 41, 42. 



THE LATER HEBREW HISTORIES. 1 69 

riah, or Malachi, any reference to the existence 
of Daniel. Nevertheless, it is hardly to be sup- 
posed that such a character was wholly fictitious ; 
we may well suppose that he existed, and that 
the narratives of his great fidelity and piety are 
at any rate founded upon fact. 

The first six chapters of the book are not 
ascribed to Daniel as their author ; he is spoken 
of in the third person, and sometimes in a way 
that a good man would not be likely to speak 
about himself. The remainder of the book claims 
to be written by him. The question is whether 
this claim is to be taken as an assertion of his- 
torical fact, or as a device of literary workman- 
ship. Ecclesiastes was undoubtedly written long 
after the Exile, yet it purports to have been com- 
posed by King Solomon. The author puts his 
words into the mouth of Solomon, to gain atten- 
tion for them. It is not fair to call this a fraud ; 
it was a perfectly legitimate literary device. It 
is entirely possible that this may be the case with 
the author of this book. Daniel was a person 
whose name was well-known among his contem- 
poraries, and the author makes him his mouth- 
piece. There may have been a special reason 
why the author should have desired to send out 
these narratives and visions under the name of a 
hero of antiquity, a reason which we shall pres- 
ently discover. 

The Book of Daniel is not what is commonly 
called a prophecy ; it is rather an apocalypse. It 



170 WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

belongs to a class of literature which sprang up 
in the last days of the Jewish nationality, after 
the old prophets had disappeared ; it is designed 
to comfort the people with hopes of future res- 
toration of the national power ; its method is that 
of vision and symbolic representation. Daniel 
is the only book of this kind in the Old Testa- 
ment ; the New Testament canon closes, as you 
know, with a similar book. I shall not undertake 
to interpret to you these visions of the Book of 
Daniel ; they are confessedly obscure and mys- 
terious. But there is one portion of the book, 
the eleventh chapter, which is admitted to be a 
minute and realistic description of the coalitions 
and the conflicts between the Graeco-Syrian and 
the Graeco-Egyptian kings, events which took 
place about the middle of the second century 
before Christ. These personages are not named, 
but they are vividly described, and the intrigues 
and vicissitudes of that portion of Jewish history 
in which they are the chief actors are fully told. 
Moreover the recital is put in the future tense ; 
" There shall stand up yet three kings in Persia ; 
and the fourth shall be richer than they all ; and 
when he is waxed strong through his riches, he 
shall stir up all against the realm of Greece." 

If, now, the Book of Daniel was written in the 
early days of the Exile, this was a very circum- 
stantial prediction of what happened in the sec- 
ond century, — a prediction uttered three hun- 
dred years before the event. And respecting 



THE LATER HEBREW HISTORIES. \J\ 

these predictions, if such they are, we must say 
this, that we have no others like them. The 
other prophets never undertake to tell the par- 
ticulars of what is coming to pass ; they give out, 
in terms very large and general, the nature of 
the events which are to come. No such carefully 
elaborated programme as this is found in any 
other predictive utterance. 

But there are those — and they include the 
vast majority of the leading Christian scholars of 
the present day — who say that these words 
were not written in the early days of the Exile ; 
that they must have been written about the mid- 
dle of the second century ; that they were there- 
fore an account of what was going on, by an on- 
looker, couched in these phrases of vision and 
prophecy. The people of Israel were passing 
through a terrible ordeal ; they needed to be 
heartened and nerved for resistance and endur- 
ance. Their heroic leader, Judas Maccabeus, was 
urging them on to prodigies of valor in their con- 
flict with the vile Antiochus ; such a ringing 
manifesto as this, put forth in the progress of the 
conflict, might have a powerful influence in re- 
inforcing their patriotism and confirming their 
faith. It might also have appeared at .some stage 
of the conflict when it would have been impru- 
dent and perhaps impossible to secure currency 
for the book if the reference to existing rulers had 
been explicit ; such a device as the author adopted 
may have been perfectly understood by the read- 



172 WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

ers ; although slightly veiled in the form of its 
deliverance, it was, perhaps, for this very reason, 
all the better fitted for its purpose. 

It might, then, have been written when the 
Ptolemies and the Seleucidae were wasting the 
fields of Palestine with their conflicts. But was 
it written then ? How do we know that it was 
not a circumstantial prediction made three hun- 
dred years before. We do not know, with abso- 
lute certainty, when it was written ; but there 
are strong reasons for believing that the later 
date is the true date. 

i. The book is not in the Hebrew collection of 
the Prophets. That collection was made at least 
a hundred years after the time at which Daniel 
is here said to have lived ; if so great a prophecy 
had been existing then, it is strange that it should 
not have been gathered with the other prophets 
into Nehemiah's collection. It is found, instead, 
among the Ketubim, — the later and supplemen- 
tary writings of the Hebrew Bible. 

2. It is strange also, as I have intimated, that 
no mention of Daniel or of his book is found in 
the histories of the Exile and the return, or in 
any of the prophecies uttered in Israel after the 
return. That there should be no allusion in any 
of these books to so distinguished a personage 
can hardly be explained. 

3. Jesus, the son of Sirach, one of the writers 
of the Apocrypha, who lived about 200 b. c, 
gives a full catalogue of all the great worthies of 



THE LATER HEBREW HISTORIES. 1 73 

Israel ; he has a list of the prophets ; he names 
all the other prophets ; he does not name Daniel. 

4. The nature of this prediction, if it be a pre- 
diction, is unaccountable. Daniel is said to have 
lived in the Babylonian period, and looked for- 
ward from that day. His people were in exile, 
but there is not a vision of his that has any ref- 
erence to their return from the captivity, to the 
rebuilding of the temple, or to any of the events 
of their history belonging to the two centuries 
following. It is strange that if, standing at that 
point of time, he was inspired to predict the fu- 
ture of the Jewish people, he should not have 
had some message respecting those great events 
in their history which were to happen within the 
next century. Instead of this, his visions, so far 
as his own people are concerned, overleap three 
centuries and land in the days of Antiochus Epi- 
phanes. Here they begin at once to be very 
specific ; they tell all the particulars of this pe- 
riod, but beyond this period they give no partic- 
ulars at all ; the vision of the Messianic triumph 
which follows is vague and general like the rest 
of the prophecies. These circumstances strongly 
support the theory of the later date. 

5. Words appear in this writing which almost 
certainly fix it at a later date than the Babylo- 
nian period. There are certainly nine undoubted 
Persian words in this book ; there are no Persian 
words in Ezekiel, who lived at the time when 
Daniel is placed at the Babylonian court, nor in 



174 WH0 WROTE THE BIBLE? 

Haggai, Zechariah, or Malachi. There are sev- 
eral Greek words, names of musical instruments, 
and it is almost certain that no Greek words were 
in use in Babylonia at that early day. This phil- 
ological argument may seem very dubious and 
far-fetched, but it is really one of the most con- 
clusive tests of the date of a document. There 
is no witness so competent as the written word. 
Let me give you a homely illustration. Suppose 
you find in some late history of the United States 
a quoted letter said to have been written by 
President Zachary Taylor, who died in 1850, re- 
specting a certain political contest. The letter 
contains the following paragraph : — 

" On receiving this intelligence, I called up 
the Secretary of State by telephone, and asked 
him how he explained the defeat. He told me 
that, in his opinion, boodle was at the bottom of 
it. I determined to make an investigation, and 
after wiring to the member of Congress in that 
district, I ordered my servant to engage me a 
section in a Pullman car, and started the same 
night for the scene of the contest." 

Now of course you know that this paragraph 
could not have been written by President Tay- 
lor, nor during the period of his administration. 
The telephone was not then in existence ; there 
were no Pullman cars ; the words "boodle" and 
" wire," in the sense here used, had never been 
heard. In precisely the same way the trained 
philologist can often determine with great cer- 



THE LATER HEBREW HISTORIES. 1 75 

tainty the date of a writing. He knows the biog- 
raphy of words or word-forms ; and he may know 
that some of the words or the word-forms con- 
tained in a certain writing were not yet in the 
language at the date when it is said to have been 
written. It is by evidence of this nature that 
the critics fix the date of the Book of Daniel at a 
period long after the close of the Babylonian em- 
pire. 

This verdict reduces, somewhat, the element 
of the marvelous contained in the book ; it does 
not in any wise reduce the moral and spiritual 
value of it. The age of the Maccabees, when this 
book appeared, was one of the great ages of Jew- 
ish history. Judas Maccabeus is one of the first 
of the Israelitish heroes ; and the struggle, in 
which he was the leader, against the dissolute 
Syrian Greeks brought out some of the strong- 
est qualities of the Hebrew character. The gen- 
uine humility, the fervid consecration, the daunt- 
less faith of the Jews of this generation put to 
shame the conduct of their countrymen in many 
ages more celebrated. And it cannot be doubted 
that this book was both the effect and the cause 
of this lofty national purpose. " Rarely," says 
Ewald, " does it happen that a book appears as 
this did, in the very crisis of the times, and in a 
form most suited to such an age, artificially re- 
served, close and severe, and yet shedding so 
clear a light through obscurity, and so marvel- 
ously captivating. It was natural that it should 



176 WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

soon achieve a success entirely corresponding to 
its inner truth and glory. And so, for the last 
time in the literature of the Old Testament, we 
have in this book an example of a work which, 
having sprung from the deepest necessities of 
the noblest impulses of the age, can render to 
that age the purest service ; and which, by the 
development of events immediately after, receives 
with such power the stamp of Divine witness 
that it subsequently attains imperishable sanc- 
tity." i 

1 Quoted by Stanley, History of the Jewish Church, iii. p. 336. 



CHAPTER VII. 

THE POETICAL BOOKS. 

The poetical books of the Old Testament now 
invite our attention, — "The Lamentations, " 
"Proverbs/' " Ecclesiastes," "The Song of Solo- 
mon," "Job," and "The Psalms." Ecclesiastes 
is not in poetical form, but it is a prose poem ; 
the movement of the language is often lyrical, 
and the thought is all expressed in poetic phrases. 
The other books are all poetical in form as well 
as in fact. 

Lamentations, called in the Hebrew Bible by 
the quaint title " Ah How," the first two words 
of the book, and in the Greek Bible " Threnoi," 
signifying mourning, is placed in the middle of 
the latest group of the Hebrew writings. In the 
English Bible it follows the prophecy of Jeremiah. 
It is called in our version " The Lamentations of 
Jeremiah." This title preserves the ancient tra- 
dition, and there is no reason to doubt that the 
tradition embodies the truth. " In favor of this 
opinion," says Bleek, "we may note the agree- 
ment of the songs with Jeremiah's prophecies in 
their whole character and spirit, in their purport, 
and in the tone of disposition shown in them, as 



178 WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

well as in the language. ... As regards the oc- 
casion and substance of these songs, the two 
first and the two last relate to the misery which 
had been sent on the Jewish people, and particu- 
larly on Jerusalem ; the middle one, however, 
chiefly refers to the personal sufferings of the 
author." l 

These five parts are not the five chapters of 
a book ; they are five distinct poems, each com- 
plete in itself, though they are all connected in 
meaning. You notice the regularity of the struc- 
ture, which is even exhibited to some extent in 
the Old Version. The first and second, the 
fourth and fifth, have each twenty-two verses or 
stanzas ; the third one has sixty-six stanzas. All 
but the last are acrostical poems. There are 
twenty-two letters in the Hebrew alphabet ; each 
of these letters, in regular order, begins a verse 
in four of these songs ; in the third lamentation 
there are three verses for each letter. 

The time at which these elegies were written 
was undoubtedly the year of the capture of Jeru- 
salem by the army of Nebuchadnezzar, 586 b. c. 
The Chaldean army had been investing the city 
for more than a year ; the walls were finally 
broken down, and the Chaldeans rushed in ; as 
they gained entrance on one side, the wretched 
King Zedekiah escaped on the other with a few 
followers and fled down the Jericho road ; he was 
pursued and overtaken, his sons and princes were 

1 Vol. ii. p. 102. 



THE POETICAL BOOKS. 179 

slain before his face, then his own eyes were put 
out, and he was led away in chains to Babylon, 
where he afterward died in captivity. After a 
few months' work of this sort, a portion of the 
Chaldeans under Nebuzar-adan returned to the 
dismantled and pillaged city and utterly de- 
stroyed both the city and the temple. It is sup- 
posed that Jeremiah, who was allowed to remain 
in the city during this bloody interval, wrote 
these elegies in the midst of the desolation and 
fear then impending. " Never," says Dean Mil- 
man, " was ruined city lamented in language so 
exquisitely pathetic. Jerusalem is, as it were, 
personified and bewailed with the passionate sor- 
row of private and domestic attachment ; while 
the more general pictures of the famine, common 
misery of every rank and age and sex, all the 
desolation, the carnage, the violation, the drag- 
ging away into captivity, the remembrance of 
former glories, of the gorgeous ceremonies, and 
of the glad festivals, the awful sense of the Di- 
vine wrath, heightening the present calamities, 
are successively drawn with all the life and real- 
ity of an eye-witness." * 

The ethical and spiritual qualities of the book 
are pure and high ; the writer does not fail to 
enforce the truth that it is because "Jerusalem 
hath grievously sinned " that " she is become an 
unclean thing." And in the midst of all this 
calamity there is no rebellion against God ; it is 

1 History of the Jews, i. 446. 



180 WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

only the cry of a desolate but trusting soul to a 
just and faithful Ruler. 

The Proverbs, in the Hebrew Bible, is called 
"Mishle," or sometimes " Mishle Shelomoh." 
The first word signifies Parables or Proverbs or 
Sayings ; the second word is the supposed name 
of the author, Solomon. By the later Jews it 
is sometimes called "Sepher Chokmah," — the 
Book of Wisdom, — the same title as that which 
is borne by one of the apocryphal books. 

Here, doubtless, we have again, in the name of 
the author, what Delitzsch calls a common de- 
nominator. On this subject the words' of Wil- 
liam Aldis Wright, in Smith's " Bible Diction- 
ary," express a conservative judgment : — 

" The superscriptions which are affixed to sev- 
eral portions of the Book of Proverbs in i. I, x. i, 
xxv. i, attribute the authorship of those portions 
to Solomon, the son of David, king of Israel. 
With the exception of the last two chapters, 
which are distinctly assigned to other authors, 
it is probable that the statement of the super- 
scriptions is in the main correct, and that the 
majority of the proverbs contained in the book 
were uttered or collected by Solomon. It y xs 
natural and quite in accordance with the prac- 
tice of other nations that the Hebrews should 
connect Solomon's name with a collection of 
maxims and precepts which form a part of their 
literature to which he is known to have contrib- 
uted most largely (i Kings, iv. 32). In the 



THE POETICAL BOOKS. l8l 

same way the Greeks attributed most of their 
sayings to Pythagoras ; the Arabs to Lokman, 
Abu Obeid, Al Mofaddel, Meidani, and Samakh- 
shari ; the Persians to Ferid Attar ; and the 
northern people to Odin. 

"But there can be no question that the Hebrews 
were much more justified in assigning the Prov- 
erbs to Solomon than the nations which have 
just been enumerated were in attributing the 
collections of national maxims to the traditional 
authors above mentioned. ,, 1 

This is, undoubtedly, as much as can be truly 
said respecting the Solomonian authorship of 
these sayings. Professor Davidson, writing at a 
later day, is more guarded. 

"In the book which now exists we find gath- 
ered together the most precious fruits of the wis- 
dom of Israel during many hundreds of years, 
and undoubtedly the later centuries were richer, 
or at all events fuller, in their contributions than 
the earlier. The tradition, however, which con- 
nects Solomon with the direction of mind known 
as ' The Wisdom ' cannot be reasonably set 
aside. . . . Making allowances for the exaggera- 
te rs of later times, we should leave history and 
tradition altogether unexplained if we disallowed 
the claim of Solomon to have exercised a crea- 
tive influence upon the wisdom in Israel. ,, 2 

The book is divided into several sections : 

1 Art. " Book of Proverbs." 

2 Art. " Proverbs," Encyc. Brit. 



1 82 WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

i. A general introduction, explaining the char- 
acter and aim of the book, which occupies the 
first six verses. 

2. A connected discourse upon wisdom, not in 
the form of maxims, but rather in the manner of 
a connected essay, fills the first nine chapters. 

3. The next thirteen chapters (x.-xxii. 16) con- 
tain three hundred and seventy-four miscellane- 
ous proverbs, each consisting of two phrases, the 
second of which is generally antithetical to the 
first, as " A wise son maketh a glad father, but a 
foolish son is a heaviness to his mother." There 
is only one exception (xix. 7), where the couplet 
is a triplet. Probably one phrase has been lost. 
The heading of this section is " The Proverbs of 
Solomon ; " the section ends with the twenty- 
second chapter. 

4. From xxii. 17 to xxiv. 22 is a more con- 
nected discussion, though in the proverbial form, 
of the principles of conduct. This is introduced 
by a brief exhortation to listen to " the words of 
the wise." 

5. At xxiv. 23, begins another short section 
which extends through the chapter, under this 
title : " These also are sayings of the wise." 

6. The next five chapters (xxv.-xxix.) have for 
their caption this sentence: " These also are 
proverbs of Solomon, which the men of Heze- 
kiah, king of Judah, copied out." 

7. Chapter xxx. is said to contain "The words 
of Agur, the son of Jakeh, the oracle." The 
author is wholly unknown. 



THE POETICAL BOOKS. 183 

8. Chapter xxxi. 1-9, contains "The words of 
King Lemuel, the prophecy that his mother 
taught him." He too stands here upon the 
sacred page but the shadow of a name. 

9. The book closes with an acrostical poem — 
twenty-two verses beginning with the Hebrew 
letters in the order of the alphabet — upon "The 
Virtuous Woman." The word "virtue" here is 
used in the Roman sense ; it signifies rather the 
vigorous woman, the capable woman. 

Of these sections it seems probable that the 
one here numbered 6 is the oldest, and that it 
contains the largest proportion of Solomonian 
sayings. Professor Davidson thinks that it can- 
not have taken its present form earlier than the 
eighth century. 

The character of the teaching of the book is 
not uniform, but on the whole it is best described 
as prudential rather than prophetic. It embod- 
ies what we are in the habit of calling " good 
common sense." There is an occasional maxim 
whose application to our own time may be 
doubted, and now and then one whose morality 
has been superseded by the higher standards of 
the New Testament ; but, after making all due 
deductions, we shall doubtless agree that it is a 
precious legacy of practical counsel, and shall 
consent to these words of Professor Conant : — 

" The gnomic poetry of the most enlightened 
of other nations will not bear comparison with it 
in the depth and certainty of its foundation prin- 



1 84 WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

ciples, or in the comprehensiveness and moral 
grandeur of its conceptions of human duty and 
responsibility." 1 

Ecclesiastes, or the Preacher, bears in the 
Hebrew collection the name, " Koheleth," which 
means the assembler of the people, and therefore, 
probably, the man who addresses the assembly. 
Ecclesiastes is the Greek name of the book in the 
Septuagint ; we have simply copied the Greek 
word in English letters. 

The first verse is, " The words of Koheleth 
(the Preacher), the son of David, King in Jeru- 
salem." The only son of David who was ever 
king in Jerusalem was Solomon ; was Solomon 
the author of this book ? This is the apparent 
claim ; the question is whether we have not here, 
as in the case of Daniel, a book put forth pseu- 
donymously; whether the author does not per- 
sonate Solomon, and speak his message through 
Solomon's lips. That this is the fact modern 
scholars almost unanimously maintain. Their 
reasons for their opinion may be briefly stated : 

i. In the conclusion of the book the author 
speaks in his own person, laying aside the thin 
disguise which he has been wearing. In several 
other passages the literary veil becomes trans- 
parent. Thus (i. 12), "I Koheleth was king over 
Israel in Jerusalem." This sounds like the voice 
of one looking backward and trying to put him- 
self in Solomon's place. Again, in this and the 

1 Smith's Bible Dictionary ', iii. 2616. 



THE POETICAL BOOKS. 1 85 

following chapter, he says of himself : " I have 
gotten me great wisdom above all that were be- 
fore me in Jerusalem ; " " I was great, and in- 
creased more than all that were before me in 
Jerusalem, ,, etc., — "all of which," says Bleek, 
" does not appear very natural as coming from 
the son of David, who first captured Jerusalem." 
Nobody had been before him in Jerusalem except 
his father David. 

2. The state of society as described in the 
book, and particularly the reference to rulers, 
agree better with the theory that it was written 
during the Persian period, after the captivity, 
when the satraps of the Persian king were ruling 
with vacillating arbitrariness and fitful violence. 

3. The religious condition of the people as here 
depicted, and the religious ideas of the book rep- 
resent the period following the Captivity, and do 
not represent the golden age of Israel. 

'4. More important and indeed perfectly deci- 
sive is the fact that the book is full of Chaldaisms, 
and that the Hebrew is the later Hebrew, of the 
days of Ezra, Nehemiah, Daniel, and Esther. It 
could not have been written by Solomon, any 
more than the " Idylls of the King " could have 
been written by Edmund Spenser. There are 
those, of course, who maintain that the book was 
written by Solomon ; just as there are those who 
still maintain that the sun revolves around the 
earth. The reason for this opinion is found in 
the first sentence of the book itself. The book 



1 86 WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

announces its own author, it is said ; and to ques- 
tion the truth of this claim is to deny the veracity 
of Scripture. On this question we may call, from 
the array of conservative writers who have given 
us Smith's " Bible Dictionary," such a witness as 
Professor Plumptre : — 

" The hypothesis that every such statement in 
a canonical book must be received as literally 
true is, in fact, an assumption that inspired writ- 
ers were debarred from forms of composition 
which were open, without blame, to others. In 
the literature of every other nation the form of 
personated authorship, when there is no animus 
decipiendi, has been recognized as a legitimate 
channel for the expression of opinions, or the 
quasi-dramatic representation of character. Why 
should we venture on the assertion that if adopted 
by the writers of the Old Testament it would 
make them guilty of falsehood ? . . . There is 
nothing that need startle us in the thought that 
an inspired writer might use a liberty which has 
been granted without hesitation to the teachers 
of mankind in every age and country." * 

That such is the character of the book and 
that it appeared some time during the Persian 
age are well-ascertained results of scholarship. 

The doctrine of the book is not so easily sum- 
marized. It is a hard book to interpret. Dr. 
Ginsberg gives a striking resume of the different 
theories of its teaching which have been promul- 

1 Art. " Ecclesiastes," vol. i. p. 645. 



THE POETICAL BOOKS. 1 87 

gated. There is no room here to enter upon the 
great question. Let it suffice to say that we 
seem to have in these words the soliloquy of a 
soul struggling with the problem of evil, some- 
times borne down by a dismal skepticism, some- 
times asserting his faith in the enduring right- 
eousness. The writer's problem is the one to 
which Mr. Mallock has given an epigrammatic 
statement: " Is life worth living ? " He greatly 
doubts, yet he strongly hopes. Much of the 
time it appears to him that the best thing a man 
can do is to enjoy the present good and let the 
world wag. But the outcome of all this struggle 
is the conviction that there is a life beyond this 
life and a tribunal at which all wrongs will be 
righted, and that to fear God and keep his com- 
mandments is the whole duty of man. There 
are thus many passages in the book which ex- 
press a bitter skepticism ; to winnow the wheat 
from the chaff and to find out what we ought to 
think about life is a serious undertaking. It is 
only the wise and skillful interpreter who can 
steer his bark along these tortuous channels of 
reflection, and not run aground. Yet, properly 
interpreted, the book is sound for substance of 
doctrine, and the experience which it delineates, 
though sad and depressing, is full of instruction 
for us. Dean Stanley's words about it are as 
true as they are eloquent ; they will throw some 
light on the path which lies just before us : — 
" As the Book of Job is couched in the form of 



1 88 WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

a dramatic argument between the patriarch and 
his friends, as the Song of Songs is a dramatic 
dialogue between the Lover and the Loved One, 
so the Book of Ecclesiastes is a drama of a still 
more tragic kind. It is an interchange of voices, 
higher and lower, mournful and joyful, within a 
single human soul. It is like the struggle be- 
tween the two principles in the Epistle to the 
Romans. It is like the question and answer of 
1 The Two Voices ' of our modern poet. . . . 
Every speculation and thought of the human 
heart is heard and expressed and recognized in 
turn. The conflicts, which in other parts of the 
Bible are confined to a single verse or a single 
chapter, are here expanded into a whole book." 
And after quoting a few of the darker and more 
cynical utterances, this clear-sighted teacher goes 
on : " Their cry is indeed full of doubt and de- 
spair and perplexity ; it is such as we often hear 
from the melancholy, skeptical, inquiring spirits 
of our own age ; such as we often refuse to hear 
and regard as unworthy even a good man's 
thought or care, but the admission of such a cry 
into the Book of Ecclesiastes shows that it is not 
beneath the notice of the Bible, not beneath the 
notice of God." 1 

" The Song of Songs " is another of the books 
ascribed to Solomon. It may have been written 
in Solomon's time ; that it was composed by 
Solomon himself is not probable. 

1 History of the Jewish Church, ii. 283. 284. 



THE POETICAL BOOKS. 1 89 

It has generally been regarded as an allegor- 
ical poem ; the Jews interpreted it as setting 
forth the love of Jehovah for Israel ; the Chris- 
tian interpreters have made it the representation 
of the love of Christ for his Church. These are 
the two principal theories, but it might be in- 
structive to let Archdeacon Farrar recite- to us a 
short list of the explanations which have been 
given of the book in the course of the ages : — 

" It represents, say the commentators, the 
love of God for the congregation of Israel ; it re- 
lates the history of the Jews from the Exodus to 
the Messiah ; it is a consolation to afflicted Israel ; 
it is an occult history ; it represents the union of 
the divine soul with the earthly body, or of the 
material with the active intellect ; it is the con- 
versation of Solomon and Wisdom ; it describes 
the love of Christ to his Church ; it is historico- 
prophetic ; it is Solomon's thanksgiving for a 
happy reign ; it is a love-song unworthy of any 
place in the canon ; it treats of man's reconcilia- 
tion to God ; it is a prophecy of the Church from 
the Crucifixion till after the Reformation ; it is 
an anticipation of the Apocalypse ; it is the seven 
days' epithalamium on the marriage of Solomon 
with the daughter of Pharaoh ; it is a magazine 
for direction and consolation under every condi- 
tion ; it treats in hieroglyphics of the sepulchre 
of the Saviour, his death, and the Old Testament 
saints ; it refers to Hezekiah and the Ten Tribes ; 
it is written in glorification of the Virgin Mary. 



I90 WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

Such were the impossible and diverging interpre- 
tations of what many regarded as the very Word 
of God. A few only, till the beginning of this 
century, saw the truth, — which is so obvious to 
all who go to the Bible with the humble desire to 
know what it says, and not to interpret it into 
their own baseless fancies, — that it is the ex- 
quisite celebration of a pure love in humble life ; 
of a love which no splendor can dazzle and no 
flattery seduce.' ' 

These last sentences of Canon Farrar give the 
probable clew to the interpretation of the book. 
It is a dramatic poem, celebrating the story of a 
beautiful peasant girl, a native of the northern 
village of Shunem, who was carried away by Sol- 
omon's officers and confined in his harem at Jeru- 
salem. But in the midst of all this splendor her 
heart is true to the peasant lover whom she has 
left behind, nor can any blandishments of the 
king disturb her constancy ; her honor remains 
unstained, and she is carried home at length, 
heart-whole and happy, by the swain who has 
come to Jerusalem for her rescue. This is the 
beautiful story. The phrases in which it is told 
are, indeed, too explicit for Occidental ears ; the 
color and the heat of the tropics is in the poetry, 
but it is perfectly pure ; it celebrates the triumph 
of maiden modesty and innocence. " The song 
breathes at the same time," says Ewald, "such 
deep modesty and chaste innocence of heart, 
such determined defiance of the over-refinement 



THE POETICAL BOOKS. 191 

and degeneracy of the court-life, such stinging 
scorn of the growing corruption of life in great 
cities and palaces, that no clearer or stronger 
testimony can be found of the healthy vigor 
which, in this century, still characterized the na- 
tion at large, than the combination of art and 
simplicity in the Canticles." 1 

The Book of Job has been the subject of a 
great amount of critical study. The earliest Jew- 
ish tradition is that it was written by Moses ; 
this tradition is preserved in the Talmud, which 
afterward states that it was composed by an Is- 
raelite who returned to Palestine from the Baby- 
lonian Captivity, It is almost certain that the 
first of these traditions is baseless. The theory 
that it was written after the Captivity is held by 
many scholars, but it is beset with serious diffi- 
culties. 

The book contains no allusion whatever to the 
Levitical law, nor to any of the religious rites 
and ceremonies of the Jews. The inference has 
therefore been drawn that it must have been 
written before the giving of the law, probably in 
the period between Abraham and Moses. It 
seems inconceivable that a devout Hebrew should 
have treated all the great questions discussed in 
this book without any reference to the religious 
institutions of his own people. It is equally diffi- 
cult to understand how the divine interposition 
for the punishment of the wicked and the reward- 

1 History of 'Israel \ iv. 43. 



192 WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

ing of the righteous could have been so fully con- 
sidered without a glance at the lessons of the 
Exodus, if the Exodus had taken place before the 
book was written. But these arguments for an 
early origin are quite neutralized by the doctrine 
of the book. The view of divine providence set 
forth in it is very unlike that contained in the 
Pentateuch. It is not necessary to say that there 
is any contradiction between these two views ; 
but the subject is approached from a very differ- 
ent direction, and the whole tone of the book in- 
dicates a state of religious thought quite differ- 
ent from that which existed among the Hebrews 
before the Exodus. "If we are to believe that 
Moses wrote it," says a late critic, "then we 
must believe that he held these views as an eso- 
teric philosophy, and omitted from the religion 
which he gave to his people the truths which had 
been revealed to him in the desert. The book 
itself must have been suppressed until long after 
his day. The ignorant Israelites could not have 
been trained under the discipline of the Law if 
they had had at the same time the fiery, cynical, 
half-skeptical, and enigmatical commentary which 
the Book of Job furnishes. There is nothing ab- 
normal or contrary to the conception of an in- 
spired revelation in the development of truth by 
wider views and deeper analysis through succes- 
sive sacred writers. But it is repulsive to con- 
ceive an inspired teacher as first gaining the 
wider view, and then deliberately hiding it, to 



THE POETICAL BOOKS. 1 93 

utter the truth in cruder and more partial 
forms." 1 The fact that neither the person nor 
the Book of Job is mentioned in the historical 
books of the Jews, and that the first reference to 
him is in the Book of Ezekiel, would indicate 
that the date of the book must have been much 
later than the time of Moses. This argument 
could not be pressed, however, for we have noted 
already the silence of the earlier historical books 
concerning the Mosaic law. 

The dilemma of the critics may be summed up 
as follows : — 

1. The absence of allusion to the history of 
the Exodus and to the Mosaic system shows that 
it must have been written before the Exodus. 
2. The absence of all reference to the book in 
the Hebrew history, and more especially the doc- 
trinal character of the book, shows that it could 
not have been written before the age of Solomon. 
The latter conclusion is held much more firmly 
than the former ; and the silence respecting the 
history and the Law is explained on the theory 
that the book is a historical drama, the scene 
of which is laid in the period before Moses, and 
the historic unities of which have been perfectly 
observed by the writer. The people of this 
drama lived before the Exodus and the giving of 
the Law, and their conversations do not, there- 
fore, refer to any of the events which have hap- 
pened since. The locality of the drama is the 

1 Raymond's The Book of Job, p. 18. 



194 WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

" Land of Uz," and the geographers agree that 
the descriptions of the book apply to the region 
known in the classical geographies as " Arabia 
Deserta," southeast of Palestine. It is admitted 
that the scenery and costume of the book are not 
Jewish ; and they agree more perfectly with what 
is known of that country than with any other, 
That Job was a real personage, and that the drama 
is founded upon historical tradition cannot be 
doubted. It is probable that it was written after 
the time of Josiah. 

I need not rehearse the story. Job is over- 
taken by great losses and sufferings ; in the 
midst of his -calamities three friends draw near 
to condole with him, and also to administer to 
him a little wholesome reproof and admonition. 
Their theory is that suffering such as he is en- 
during is a sign of the divine displeasure ; that 
Job must have been a great sinner, or he could 
not be such a sufferer. This argument Job in- 
dignantly repels. He does not claim to be per- 
fect, but he knows that he has been an upright 
man, and he knows that bad men round about 
him are prospering, while he is scourged and over- 
whelmed with trouble ; he sees this happening 
all over the earth, — the good afflicted, the evil 
exalted ; and he knows, therefore, that the doc- 
trine of his miserable comforters cannot be true. 
Sin does bring suffering, that he admits; but 
that all suffering is the result of sin he denies. 
He cannot understand it ; his heart is bitter when 



THE POETICAL BOOKS, 1 95 

he reflects upon it ; and the insistence of his vis- 
itors awakes in him a fierce indignation, and 
leads him to charge God with injustice and cru- 
elty. They are shocked and scandalized at his 
almost blasphemous outcries against God ; but 
he maintains his righteousness, and drives his 
critics and censors from the field. Finally Je- 
hovah himself is represented as answering Job 
out of the whirlwind, in one of the most sublime 
passages in all literature, — silencing the argu- 
ments of his friends, sweeping away all the rea- 
sonings which have preceded, explaining rfothing, 
but only affirming his own infinite power and 
wisdom. Before this august manifestation Job 
bows with submission ; the mystery of evil is not 
explained ; he is only convinced that it cannot 
be explained, and is content to be silent and wait. 
The teaching of the book is well summarized in 
these words of Dr. Raymond : — 

"The current notion that calamity is always 
the punishment of crime and prosperity always 
the reward of piety is not true. Neither is it 
true that the distress of a righteous man is an 
indication of God's anger. There are other pur- 
poses in the Divine mind of which we know 
nothing. For instance, a good man may be af- 
flicted, by permission of God, and through the 
agency of Satan, to prove the genuine character 
of his goodness. But whether this or some other 
reason, involved in the administration of the uni- 
verse, underlies the dispensation of temporal 



I96 WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

blessings and afflictions, one thing is certain: 
the plans of God are not, will not be, cannot be 
revealed ; and the resignation of faith, not of fa- 
talism, is the only wisdom of man." * 

I have reserved for the last the most precious 
of all the Hebrew writings, the Book of Psalms. 
The Hebrews called it "Tehillim," praise-book 
or hymn-book, and the title exactly describes it ; 
in the form in which we have it, it was a hymn- 
book prepared for the service of the later temple. 

If the question " Who wrote the Psalms ? " 
were tcrbe propounded in any meeting of Sunday- 
school teachers, nine tenths of them would un- 
hesitatingly answer, " David." If the same ques- 
tion were put to an assembly of modern Biblical 
scholars some would answer that David wrote 
very few and perhaps not any of the psalms; 
that they were written during the Maccabean 
dynasty, only one or two hundred years before 
Christ. Both these views are extreme. We 
may believe that David did write several of the 
psalms, but it is more than probable that the great 
majority of them are from other writers. 

Seventy-three psalms of the book seem to be 
ascribed to David in their titles. " A Psalm of 
David," " Maschil of David," " Michtam of David," 
or something similar is written over seventy-three 
different psalms. Concerning these titles there 
has been much discussion. It has been main- 
tained that they are found in the ancient Hebrew 

1 The Book of Job, p. 49. 



THE POETICAL BOOKS. 1 97 

text as constituent parts of the Psalms, and are 
therefore entitled to full credit. But this theory 
does not seem to be held by the majority of modern 
scholars. "The variations of the inscriptions," 
says a late conservative writer, " in the Septuagint 
and the other versions sufficiently prove that they 
were not regarded as fixed portions of the canon, 
and that they were open to conjectural emenda- 
tions. ,, 1 Dr. Moll, the learned author of the 
monograph on the Psalms in Lange's " Commen- 
tary," says in his introduction : " The assumption 
that all the inscriptions originated with the au- 
thors of the Psalms, and are therefore inseparable 
from the text, cannot be consistently maintained. 
It can at most be held only of a few. . . . There 
is now a disposition to admit that some of them 
may have originated with the authors themselves." 
The probability is that most of these inscrip- 
tions were added by editors and transcribers of 
the Psalms. You open your hymn-book, and find 
over one hymn the name of Watts, and over an- 
other the name of Wesley, and over another the 
name of Montgomery. Who inserted these 
names ? Not the authors, of course, but the ed- 
itor or compiler of the collection. Compilers in 
these days are careful and accurate, but they do 
make mistakes, and you find the same hymn as- 
cribed to different authors in different books, 
while hymns that are anonymous in one book are 
credited in another, rightly or wrongly, to the 

1 Speaker's Commentary \ iv. 151. 



I98 WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

name of some author. The men who collected 
the hymn-book of the Jews made similar mis- 
takes, and the old copies do not agree in all their 
titles. 

But while the inscriptions over the psalms do 
not, generally, belong to the psalms themselves, 
and are not in all cases accurate, most of them 
were, no doubt, suffixed to the psalms at a very 
early day. "On the whole," says Dr. Moll, "an 
opinion favorable to the antiquity and value of 
these superscriptions has again been wrought out, 
which ascribes them for the most part to tradi- 
tion, and indeed a very ancient one." 

Even if the titles were rightly translated, then, 
they would not give us conclusive proof of the 
authorship of the Psalms. But some of the best 
scholars assert that they are not rightly trans- 
lated. The late Professor Murray of Johns Hop- 
kins University, whose little book on the Psalms 
is vouched for as one of the most admirable pro- 
ductions of Biblical scholarship which has yet 
appeared in this country, says that " whenever we 
have an inscription in our version stating that 
the psalm is l of David ' it is almost invariably a 
mistranslation of the original." It should be 
written " to David," and it signifies that the com- 
pilers ascribed the psalm to a more ancient col- 
lection to which the name of David had been 
appended, not because he wrote all the poems in 
it, but because he originated the collection and 
wrote many of its songs. This older collection 



THE POETICAL BOOKS. 1 99 

was called "The Psalms of David " something as 
a popular hymn-book of these times is called 
Robinson's " Laudes Domini," because Dr. Rob- 
inson compiled the book, and wrote some of the 
hymns. This old Davidic collection is not in ex- 
istence, but many of the psalms in our book were 
taken from it, and the titles in our version are 
attempts to credit to this old book such of them 
as were thus borrowed. 

This method of crediting is not altogether un- 
known in this critical age. In the various eclec- 
tic commentaries on the Sunday-school lessons I 
often find sentences and paragraphs credited to 
"William Smith" which were taken from Dr. 
Smith's " Bible Dictionary," the articles from 
which they are taken being signed in all cases by 
the initials of the men who wrote them. I find, 
also, quotations from the " Speaker's Commen- 
tary," of which Canon Cook is the editor, ascribed 
to "F. C. Cook," or to " Cook," though the table 
of contents in the volume from which the quota- 
tion was taken bears in capital letters the name of 
the writer of the commentary on this particular 
book. In like manner u Lange " gets the credit 
of all that is written in his famous " Bibelwerk," 
though he wrote very little of it himself. The 
power to distinguish between editorship and au- 
thorship was not, probably, possessed by ancient 
compilers in any greater degree than by modern 
ones ; and the inscriptions over the psalms must 
be estimated with this fact in view. 



200 WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

I have spoken of the present collection of the 
Psalms as one book, but it is in reality five 
books. It is so divided in the Revised Version. 
The concluding verse of the Forty-first Psalm is 
as follows : " Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, 
from everlasting to everlasting. Amen and 
amen." This doxology marks the close of the 
first hymn-book prepared by the Jews for the 
worship of the second temple. It was probably 
formed soon after the first return from the Exile. 
All the Psalms except the first, the tenth, and the 
thirty-third are credited to the old Davidic Psalm 
Book. The title of the thirty-third has probably 
been omitted by some copyist; the ninth and 
tenth in some old Hebrew copies are written as 
one psalm, and there is an acrostical arrangement 
which shows that they really belong together. 
The psalm may have been divided for liturgical 
purposes, or by accident in copying. The title 
of the ninth, therefore, covers the tenth. The 
first and second are, then, the only psalms that 
are not ascribed to the old book of which this 
book was simply an abridgment. 

At the end of the Seventy-second Psalm is the 
doxology which marks the close of the second of 
these hymn-books. After a while the psalms of 
the first book grew stale and familiar, and a new 
book was wanted. " Gospel Hymns No. I," of 
the Moody and Sankey psalmody, had to be fol- 
lowed after a year or two by " Gospel Hymns 
No. 2," and then by " No. 3 " and "No. 4" and 



THE POETICAL BOOKS. 201 

" No. 5," and finally they were all bound up to- 
gether. I may be pardoned for associating things 
sacred with things not very sacred, and poetry 
with something that is not always poetry, but the 
illustration, familiar to all, shows exactly how 
these five hymn-books of the Jews first came to 
be, and how they were at length combined in one. 

The last verse of the Seventy-second Psalm has 
puzzled many readers : " The prayers of David 
the son of Jesse are ended." After this you find 
in our collection several psalms ascribed to David, 
some of which he undoubtedly wrote. The prob- 
able explanation is that the Seventy-second Psalm 
was the last psalm of the old Davidic hymn-book ; 
the compiler made it the last one of this second 
book, and carelessly copied into this psalm the 
inscription with which the old book ended. 

The second of these hymn-books begins, there- 
fore, with Psalm xlii., and ends with Psalm lxxii., 
a collection of thirty-one songs of praise. 

Number three of the temple-service contains 
eighteen psalms, and ends with Psalm lxxxix ; 
this book, as well as the one that precedes it, is 
ascribed by a probable tradition to Nehemiah as 
its compiler. 

The last verse of Psalm cvi. indicates the close 
of the fourth book. It contains but seventeen 
psalms, and is the shortest book of the five. 

The fifth book includes the remaining forty- 
four psalms, among them the " Songs of David/' 
or Pilgrim Songs, sung by the people on their 



202 WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

journeys to Jerusalem to keep the solemn feasts. 
It is probable that this fifth book was compiled 
by the authorities in charge of the temple wor- 
ship, and that they at the same time collected the 
other four books and put them all together, com- 
pleting in this way the greater book of sacred 
lyrics which has been so precious to many gen- 
erations not only of Jews, but also of Christians. 

Various unsuccessful attempts have been made 
to classify these books according to their subject- 
matter. It is plain that the first two are com- 
posed chiefly of the oldest psalms and of those 
adapted to the general purposes of worship ; the 
third book reflects the grief of the nation in the 
Captivity; the fourth, the joy of the returning 
exiles ; the fifth contains a more miscellaneous 
collection. 

The Jewish scholars recognize and sometimes 
attempt to explain this arrangement of the Psalms 
into five books. The Hebrew Midrash on Psalm 
i. i., says : " Moses gave the five books of the 
law to the Israelites, and as a counterpart of 
them, David gave the Psalms consisting of five 
books." This is, of course, erroneous ; the pres- 
ent collection of Psalms was made long after the 
time of David ; but it is not unlikely that some 
notion of a symmetrical arrangement of the 
Psalms, to correspond to the five-fold division of 
the Law, influenced the compilers of this Praise 
Book. 

Of the contents of this book, of the peculiar 



THE POETICAL BOOKS. 203 

structure of Hebrew poetry, and of the historic 
references in many of the psalms, much might be 
said, but this investigation would lead us some- 
what aside from our present purpose. 

It may, however, be well to add a word or two 
respecting some of the inscriptions and notations 
borne by the Psalms in our translation. Many 
of them are composed of Hebrew words, translit- 
erated into English, — spelled out with English 
letters. King James* translators did not know 
what they meant, so they reproduced them in 
this way. There has been much discussion as 
to the meaning of several of them, and the schol- 
ars are by no means agreed ; the interpretations 
which follow are mainly those given by Professor 
Murray : — 

First is the famous " Selah," which we used to 
hear pronounced with great solemnity when the 
Psalms were read. It is a musical term, mean- 
ing, perhaps, something like our " Da Capo " or, 
possibly, "Forte" — a mark of expression like 
those Italian words which you find over the staff 
on your sheet music. 

" Michtam " and " Maschil " are also musical 
notes, indicating the time of the melody, — met- 
ronome-marks, so to speak; and "Gittith" and 
" Shiggaion " are marks that indicate the kind 
of melody to which the psalm is to be sung. 

" Negiloth " means stringed instruments ; it 
indicates the kind of accompaniment with which 
the psalm was to be sung. "Nehiloth " signifies 



204 WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

pipes or flutes, perhaps wind instruments in gen- 
eral. 

The inscription "To the Chief Musician " 
means, probably, " For the Leader of the Choir," 
and indicates that the original copy of the psalm 
thus inserted in the book was one that had be- 
longed to the chorister in the old temple. 
" Upon Shemimith " means " set for bass voices ; " 
" Upon Alamoth," "set for female voices. ,, 
" Upon Muthlabben," a curious transliteration, 
means " arranged for training the soprano 
voices." Professor Murray supposes that this 
particular psalm was used for rehearsal by the 
women singers. 

Some of these inscriptions designate the airs 
to which the psalms were set, part of which 
seem to be sacred, and part secular. Such is 
" Shushan Eduth," over Psalm lx., meaning 
"Fair as lilies is thy law," apparently the name 
of a popular religious air. Another, probably 
secular, is over Psalm xxii., "Aijeleth Shahar," 
"The stag at dawn," and another, over Psalm 
lvi., " Jonathelem Rechokim," which is, being in- 
terpreted, " O silent dove, what bringest thou us 
from out the distance ? " 

These inscriptions and many other features of 
this ancient Hebrew poetry have furnished puz- 
zles for the unlearned and problems for the schol- 
ars, but the meaning of the psalms themselves 
is for the most part clear enough. The humble 
disciple pauses with some bewilderment over 



THE POETICAL BOOKS. 205 

"Neginoth" or "Michtam ;" he classes them 
perhaps among the mysteries which the angels 
desire to look into ; but when he reads a little 
farther on, " The Lord is my shepherd ; I shall 
not want ; " or " God is our refuge and strength, 
a very present help in trouble ; " or "Create in 
me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right 
spirit within me," he knows full well what these 
words mean. There is no life so lofty that these 
psalms do not lift up a standard before it ; there 
is no life so lowly that it does not find in them 
words that utter its deepest humility and its 
faintest trust. Wherever we are these psalms 
find us ; they search the deep things of our 
hearts ; they bring to us the great things of God. 
Of how many heroic characters have these old 
temple songs been the inspiration! Jewish 
saints and patriots chanted them in the syna- 
gogue and on the battle-field ; apostles and evan- 
gelists sung them among perils of the wilderness, 
as they traversed the rugged paths of Syria and 
Galatia and Macedonia ; martyrs in Rome softly 
hummed them when the lions near at hand were 
crouching for their prey : in German forests, in 
Highland glens, Lutherans and Covenanters 
breathed their lives out through their cadences ; 
in every land penitent souls have found in them 
words to tell the story of their sorrow, and victo- 
rious souls the voices of their triumph ; mothers 
watching their babes by night have cheered the 
vigil by singing them ; mourners walking in 



206 WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

lonely ways have been lighted by the great hopes 
that shine through them, and pilgrims going 
down into the valley of the shadow of death have 
found in their firm assurances a strong staff to 
lean upon. Lyrics like these, into which so much 
of the divine truth was breathed when they were 
written, and which a hundred generations of the 
children of men have saturated with tears and 
praises, with battle shouts and sobs of pain, with 
all the highest and deepest experiences of the 
human soul, will live as long as joy lives and 
long after sorrow ceases ; will live beyond this 
life, and be sung by pure voices in that land from 
which the silent dove, coming from afar, brings 
us now and then upon her shining wings some 
glimpses of a glory that eye hath never seen./ 



CHAPTER VIII. 

THE EARLIER NEW TESTAMENT WRITINGS. 

The books of the New Testament are now 
before us. Our task is not without its difficul- 
ties ; questions will confront us which have never 
yet been answered, and probably will never be; 
nevertheless, compared with the Old Testament 
writings, the books of the New Testament are 
well-known documents ; we are on firm ground 
of history when we talk about them ; of but few 
of the famous books of Greek and Latin authors 
can we speak so confidently as to their date and 
their authorship as we can concerning most of 
them. 

We have in the New Testament a collection of 
twenty-seven books, by nine different authors. 
Of these books thirteen are ascribed to the Apos- 
tle Paul ; five to John the son of Zebedee ; two 
to Peter ; two to Luke ; one each to Matthew, 
Mark, James, and Jude, and the authorship of 
one is unknown. 

Of these books it must be first remarked that 
they were not only written separately P but that 
there is no trace in any of them of the conscious- 
ness on the part of the author that he was con- 



208 WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

tributing to a collection of sacred writings. Of 
the various epistles it is especially evident that 
they were written on special occasions, with 
a certain audience immediately in view ; the 
thought that they were to be preserved and gath- 
ered into a book, which was to be handed down 
through the coming centuries as an inspired vol- 
ume, does not appear to have entered the mind of 
the writer.) But this fact need not detract from 
their value ; often the highest truth to which a 
man gives utterance is truth of whose value he 
is imperfectly aware. 

It must also be remembered that these books 
of the New Testament were nearly all written by 
apostles. The only clear exceptions are the Gos- 
pel of Mark, the Gospel of Luke, the Acts of the 
Apostles, and the Epistle to the Hebrews ; and 
the authors of these books, though not apostles, 
were undoubtedly in the closest relations with 
apostolic men, and reflected their thought. These 
apostolic men had received a special training and 
a definite commission to bear witness of their 
Master, to tell the story of his life and death, 
and to build up his kingdom in the world. 

We must admit that they possessed unusual 
qualifications for this work. Those who had 
been for three years in constant and loving inter- 
course with Jesus Christ ought to have been in- 
spired men. And he promised them, before he 
parted from them, that the Spirit of truth should 
come to them and abide with them to lead them 
into all truth. 



EARLIER NEW TESTAMENT WRITINGS. 209 

Now although we may find it difficult to give a 
satisfactory definition of inspiration ; though we 
may be utterly unable to express, in any formu- 
laries of our own, the influence of the Infinite 

* 

Spirit upon human minds, yet we can easily be- 
lieve that these apostolic men were exceptionally 
qualified to teach religious truth. No prophet of 
the olden time had any such preparation for his 
mission as that which was vouchsafed to them. 
No school of the prophets, from the days of Sam- 
uel downward, could be compared to that sacred 
college of apostles, — that group of divine peripa- 
tetics, who followed their master through Galilee 
and Perea, and sat down with him day by day, 
for three memorable years, on the mountain top 
and by the lake side, to listen to the words of life 
from the lips of One who spake as never man 
spake. 

To say that this training made them infallible 
is to speak beyond the record. There is no 
promise of infallibility, and the history makes it 
plain enough that no such gift was bestowed. 
The Spirit of all truth was promised ; but it was 
promised for their guidance in all their work, in 
their preaching, their administration, their daily 
conduct of life. There is no hint anywhere that 
any special illumination or protection would be 
given to them when they took the pen into their 
hands to write ; they were then inspired just as 
much as they were when they stood up to speak, 
or sat down to plan their missionary campaigns, 
— just as much and no more. 



210 WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

Now it is certain that the inspiration vouch- 
safed them did not make them infallible in their 
ordinary teaching, or in their administration of 
the church. They made mistakes <jf a very seri- 
ous nature. It is beyond question that the ma- 
jority of the apostles took at the beginning an 
erroneous view of the relation of the Gentiles to 
the Christian church. They insisted that Gen- 
tiles must first become Jews before they could 
become Christians ; that the only way into the 
Christian church was through the synagogue and 
the temple. It was a grievous and radical error ; 
it struck at the foundations of Christian faith. 
And this error was entertained by these inspired 
apostles after the day of Pentecost ; it influenced 
their teaching ; it led them to proclaim a defec- 
tive gospel. This is not the assertion of a skep- 
tic, it is the clear testimony of the Apostle Paul. 
If you will read the second chapter of his Epistle 
to the Galatians you will learn from the mouth 
of an unimpeachable witness that the very leaders 
of the apostolic band, Peter and James and John, 
were greatly in error with respect to a most im- 
portant subject of the Christian teaching. In 
his account of that famous council at Antioch, 
Paul says that Peter and James and John were 
wholly in the wrong, and that Peter, for his part, 
had been acting disingenuously : — 

" But when Cephas came to Antioch, I resisted 
him to the face, because he stood condemned. 
For before that certain came from James, he did 



EARLIER NEW TESTAMENT WRITINGS. 211 

eat with the Gentiles : but when they came, he 
drew back and separated himself, fearing them 
that were of the circumcision. And the rest of 
the Jews [the Jewish Christians] dissembled 
likewise with him ; insomuch that even Barnabas 
was carried away with their dissimulation. But 
when I saw that they walked not uprightly ac- 
cording to the truth of the gospel, I said unto 
Cephas before them all, If thou, being a Jew, 
livest as do the Gentiles, and not as do the Jews, 
how compellest thou the Gentiles to live as do 
the Jews ? " 

Now it is evident that one or the other of these 
opposing parties in the apostolic college must 
have been in error, if not greatly at fault, with 
respect to this most vital question of Christian 
faith and doctrine. When one apostle resists an- 
other to the face because he stands condemned, 
and tells him that he walks not uprightly, accord- 
ing to the truth of the gospel, it must be that one 
or the other of them has, for the time being, 
ceased to be infallible in his administration of the 
truth of the gospel. And if these apostolic men, 
sitting in their councils, teaching in their con- 
gregations, can make such mistakes as these, 
how can we be sure that they never make a mis- 
take when they sit down to write, that then their 
words are always the very word of God ? We 
can have no such assurance. Indeed we are ex- 
pressly told that their words are not, in some 
cases, the very word of God ; for the Apostle Paul 



212 WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

plainly tells us over and over, in his epistles to 
the Corinthians (i Cor. vii. ; 2 Cor. xi.), that upon 
certain questions he is giving his own opinion, — 
that he has no commandment of the Lord. With 
respect to one matter he says that he is speaking 
after his own judgment, but that he "thinks" he 
has the Spirit of the Lord ; two or three times he 
distinctly declares that it is he, Paul, and not the 
Lord, that is speaking. 

All of these facts, and others of the same nature 
clearly brought before us by the New Testament 
itself, must be held firmly in our minds when we 
make up our theory of what these writings are. 
That these books were written by inspired men 
is, indeed, indubitable ; that these men possessed 
a degree of inspiration far exceeding that vouch- 
safed to any other religious teachers who have 
lived on the earth is to my mind plain ; that this 
degree of inspiration enabled them to bear wit- 
ness clearly to the great facts of the gospel of 
Christ, and to present to us with sufficient full- 
ness and with substantial verity the doctrines of 
the kingdom of heaven I am very sure ; but that 
they were absolutely protected against error, not 
one word in the record affirms, and they them- 
selves have taken the utmost pains to disabuse 
our minds of any such impression. That is a 
theory about them which men made up out of 
their own heads hundreds of years after they were 
dead. We shall certainly find that they were not 
infallible ; but we shall also find that, in all the 



EARLIER NEW TESTAMENT WRITINGS. 213 

great matters which pertain to Christian faith 
and practice, when their final testimony is col- 
lected and digested, it is clear, harmonious, con- 
sistent, convincing ; that they have been guided 
by the Spirit of the Lord to tell us the truth 
which we need to know respecting the life that 
now is and that which is to come. 

Furthermore, it is a matter of rejoicing when 
we take up these books of the New Testament 
to find their substantial integrity unimpeached. 
There is no reason to suspect that any important 
changes have been made in any of these books 
since they came from the hands of their writers. 
Whatever may be said about the first three Gos- 
pels (and we shall come to that question in our 
next chapter), the remaining books of the New 
Testament have come down to us, unaltered, 
from the men who first wrote them. There is 
none of that process of redaction, and accretion, 
and reconstruction whose traces we have found 
in many of the Old Testament books. There 
may be, here and there, a word or two or a verse 
or two which has been interpolated by some 
officious copyist, but these alterations are very 
slight. The books in our hands are the very 
same books which were in the hands of the con- 
temporaries and successors of the apostles. 

I shall not attempt any elaborate discussion of 
these twenty-seven books. I only propose to go 
rapidly over them, indicating, with the utmost 
brevity, the salient facts, so far as we know them, 



214 WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

respecting their authorship, the date and the 
place at which they were written, and the circum- 
stances which attended the production of them. 

From the fact that the Gospels stand first in 
the New Testament collection it is generally as- 
sumed that they are the earliest of the New Tes- 
tament books, but this is an error. Several of 
the Epistles were certainly written before any of 
the Gospels ; and one of the Gospels, that of 
John, was written later than any of the Epistles, 
except the three brief ones by the same author. 

The first of these New Testament books that 
saw the light was, as is generally supposed, the 
First Epistle to the Thessalonians. It was in 
the year 48 of our era that St. Paul set out on his 
first missionary journey from Antioch through 
Cyprus and Eastern Asia Minor, a journey which 
occupied about a year. Two years afterward, 
his second journey took him through the eastern 
part of Asia Minor and across the ^Egean Sea 
to Europe, where he preached in Troas, Philippi, 
Thessalonica, Athens, and Corinth. His stay in 
Thessalonica was interrupted, as you will re- 
member, by the hostility of the Jews, and he 
remained but a short time in that place ; long 
enough, however, to gather a vigorous church. 
Afterward, while he was in Corinth, he learned 
from one of his helpers that the people of Thes- 
salonica had misunderstood portions of his teach- 
ing, and were in painful doubt on certain im- 
portant subjects. To set them right on these 



EARLIER NEW TESTAMENT WRITINGS. 21$ 

matters he wrote his first epistle, which was for- 
warded to them from Corinth, probably about 
the year 52. 

This explanation was also misunderstood by 
the Thessalonians, and it became necessary dur- 
ing the next year to write to them again. These 
two letters are in all probability the first of the 
Christian writings that we possess. They con- 
tain instruction and counsel of which the Chris- 
tians of Thessalonica were just then in need. 
The question which had most disturbed them 
had relation to the second coming of Christ. 
They expected him to return very soon ; they 
were impatient of delay ; they thought that those 
who died before his coming would miss the glo- 
rious spectacle ; and therefore they deplored the 
hard fate of some of their number who had been 
snatched away by death before 'this sublime 
event. In his first epistle the apostle assures 
them that the dead in Christ would be raised to 
participate in their rejoicing. "We who are alive 
when the Lord returns, ,, he says, "will have no 
advantage over those who have been called to 
their reward before us ; for they will be raised 
from their graves to take part with us in this 
great triumph." It is manifest that Paul, when 
he wrote this, expected that Christ would return 
to earth while he was alive. Alford and other 
conservative commentators say that he here defi- 
nitely expresses that expectation ; others deny 
that these words can be so interpreted, but con- 



2l6 WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

cede that he did entertain some such expectation. 
" It does not seem improper to admit," says 
Bishop Ellicott, "that in their ignorance of the 
day of the Lord the apostles might have im- 
agined that he who was coming would come 
speedily." l " It is unmistakably clear from this," 
says Olshausen, "that Paul deemed it possible 
that he and his contemporaries might live to 
see the coming again of Christ." " The early 
church, and even the apostles themselves," say 
Conybeare and Howson, "expected their Lord 
to come again in that very generation. St. Paul 
himself shared in that expectation, but being 
under the guidance of the Spirit of truth, he did 
not deduce any erroneous conclusions from this 
mistaken premise." 2 It is evident, then, that St. 
Paul and the rest of the apostles were mistaken 
on this point; this is one of the evidences which 
they themselves have taken pains to point out to 
us of the fact that though they were inspired 
men they were not infallible. 

Paul's first letter to the Christians at Thessa- 
lonica was interpreted by them, very naturally, as 
teaching that the return of the Lord was immi- 
nent ; and they began to neglect their daily duties 
and to behave in the same foolish way that men 
have behaved in all the later ages, when they have 
got their heads full of this notion. His second 
letter was written chiefly to rebuke this fanaticism, 

1 Com, in loc. 

2 Life and Epistles of St. Paul, i. 401. 



EARLIER NEW TESTAMENT WRITINGS. 2\*] 

and to bid them go right on with their work mak- 
ing ready for the Lord's coming by a faithful 
discharge of the duties of the present hour. St. 
Paul might have been mistaken in his theories 
about the return of his Master, but his practical 
wisdom was not at fault ; it was his spirit that 
survived in Abraham Davenport, the Connecticut 
legislator, who, in the "dark day" of 1780 when 
his colleagues thought that the end of the world 
had come, refused to vote for the adjournment of 
the House, but insisted on calling up the next 
bill ; saying as Whittier has phrased it : — 

"< This well may be-y 
The Day of Judgment which the world awaits ; 
But be it so or not, I only know 
My present duty, and my Lord's command 
To occupy till he come. So at the post 
Where he hath set me in his providence, 
I choose, for one, to meet him face to face, — 
No faithless servant frightened from my task, 
But ready when the Lord of the harvest calls ; 
And therefore, with all reverence, I would say, 
Let God do his work, we will see to ours. 
Bring in the candles.' And they brought them in." 

These two letters are, then, the earliest of the 
New Testament writings. Like most of the other 
Epistles of Paul they begin with a salutation. 
The common salutation with which the Greeks 
began their letters was " Live well ! " that of the 
Roman was " Health to you ! " But Paul almost 
always began with a Christian greeting, " Grace, 
mercy, and peace to you." In these letters he 
associates with himself in this greeting his two 
companions, Timothy and Silas. 



2l8 WHO WROTE THE BIBLE ? 

The last words of his epistles are almost always 
personal messages to individuals known to him 
in the several churches, — to men and women 
who had " labored with him in the gospel," — cas- 
ual yet significant words, which "show a heart 
within blood-tinctured, of a veined humanity." 
The letters were written by an amanuensis, — all 
save these concluding words which Paul added in 
his own chirography. He seems to desire to put 
more of himself into these personal messages 
than into the didactic and doctrinal parts of his 
epistles. At the end of the second of the let- 
ters to the Thessalonians we find these words : 
"The salutation of me Paul with mine own hand, 
which is the token in every epistle : so I write ; " 
better, perhaps, "This is my handwriting." This 
signature and this concluding greeting are to be 
proof to them of the genuineness of the letter. 
It appears from other references in the same 
epistle (ch. ii. 2) that some busybody had been 
writing a letter to the Thessalonians, which pur- 
ported to be a message from Paul ; he puts them 
on their guard against these supposititious docu- 
ments. At the end of the letter to the Galatians 
you find in the old version : " Ye see how large 
a letter I have written unto you with my own 
hand ; " but the right rendering is in the new ver- 
sion : " See with how large letters [what a bold 
chirography] I have written unto you with my 
own hand." "These last coarse characters are 
my own handwriting." It is almost universally 



EARLIER NEW TESTAMENT WRITINGS, 219 

assumed that Paul was a sufferer from some af- 
fection of the eyes ; the large letters are thus 
explained. Mr. Conybeare, in a foot-note on this 
passage, speaks of receiving a letter from the 
venerable Neander a few months before his death, 
which illustrates this point in a striking manner : 
"His letter/' says Mr. Conybeare, "is written in 
the fair and flowing hand of an amanuensis, but 
it ends with a few irregular lines in large and 
rugged characters, written by himself and ex- 
plaining the cause of his needing the services of 
an amanuensis, namely the weakness of his eyes 
(probably the very malady of St. Paul). It was 
impossible to read this autograph without think- 
ing of the present passage, and observing that he 
might have expressed himself in the very words 
of St. Paul: ' Behold the size of the characters 
in which I have written to you with my own 
hand/ " * 

There is another touching sentence at the end 
of Paul's letter to the Colossians which was writ- 
ten from Rome when he was prisoner there : 
"The salutation of me Paul with mine own 
hand. Remember my bonds. Grace be with 
you. Amen." This seems to say : " There is a 
manacle, you remember, on my wrist. I cannot 
write very well. Grace be with you." I will 
only add that the subscriptions which follow the 
epistles in the old version are no part of the epis- 
tles, and in several cases they are erroneous. 

1 Life and Epistles of St. Paul, ii. 149. 



220 WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

They embody conjectures of later copyists, or 
traditions which are without foundation. These 
letters to the Thessalonians, for example, are said 
to have been written from Athens ; but we know 
that they were written from Corinth. For Paul 
expressly says (iii. 6) that the letter was written 
immediately after the return of Timothy from 
Thessalonica, and we are told, in Acts xviii. 5, 
that Silas and Timothy joined him at Corinth 
after he haxl left Athens and had gone to Corinth. 
Besides, he associates Silas and Timothy with 
himself in his greetings, and they were not with 
him at Athens. The evidence is therefore con- 
clusive, that the subscription is incorrect. You 
will not find any of these subscriptions in the 
new version. Some of them are undoubtedly cor- 
rect, but some of them are not ; and in no case 
is the subscription an integral part of the epis- 
tle. The excision of these traditional addenda 
was one of the first results of what is called the 
" Higher Criticism/' and admirably illustrates the 
uses of this kind of criticism, which, to some of 
our devout brethren, is such a frightful thing. 
Why should it be regarded as a dangerous, al- 
most a diabolical proceeding, to let the Bible tell 
its own story about its origin, instead of trusting 
to rabbinical traditions and mediaeval guesses and 
a priori theories of seventeenth century theo- 
logians ? 

These two letters were, no doubt, read in the 
assemblies of the Thessalonian Christians more 



EARLIER NEW TESTAMENT* WRITINGS. 221 

than once, and were sacredly treasured by them. 
They were the only Christian documents pos- 
sessed by them ; and there was, at this time, no 
other church so rich as they were. The Gospels, 
as we have them now, were not then in the pos- 
session of any Christian church. The story of 
the gospel had been repeated to them by Paul 
and Silas and Timothy, and had been diligently 
impressed upon their memories ; but it was only 
an oral gospel that had been delivered to them ; 
the written record of Christ's life and sayings 
was not in their hands. They remembered, 
therefore, the things which had been told them 
concerning the life and death of Jesus Christ ; 
they repeated them over one to another, and 
they explained and supplemented these remem- 
bered words by the two letters which they had 
received from the great apostle. 

The next year after Paul wrote these letters to 
the Thessalonians from Corinth, he returned to 
Jerusalem and Antioch (Acts xviii. 18-23), an d 
the year following, probably 54, he set out on his 
third missionary journey, which took him through 
Galatia and Phrygia in Asia Minor to Ephesus, 
where his home was for two or three years. 
While there, perhaps in the year 57, he wrote the 
first of his letters to the Christians in Corinth. 
Shortly after writing it he went on to Macedonia, 
whence the second of his letters to the Corin- 
thians was written ; presently he followed his 
letters to Corinth, and while there, probably in 



222 WHO* WROTE THE BIBLE? 

58, he wrote his letter to the Galatians. Galatia 
was a province rather than a city ; there may 
have been several churches, which had been es- 
tablished by Paul, in the province ; and this may 
have been a circular letter, to be handed about 
among them, copies of it to be made, perhaps, for 
the use of each of the churches. It was in the 
spring of the next year, while he was still in 
Corinth, that he wrote his letter to the Romans, 
the longest, and from some points of view, the 
most important of his epistles. He had never, 
at the time of this writing, been in Rome (ch. i. 
13), but he had met Roman Christians in many 
of the cities of the East where he had lived and 
taught ; and, doubtless, since all roads led to 
Rome, and the metropolis of the world was con- 
stantly drawing to itself men of every nation 
and province, many of Paul's converts in Asia 
and Macedonia and Achaia had made their way 
to the Eternal City, and had joined themselves 
there to the Christian community. The long 
list of personal greetings with which the epistle 
closes shows how large was his acquaintance in 
the Roman church, and, doubtless, by his corre- 
spondence, he had become fully informed con- 
cerning the needs of these disciples. He tells the 
Romans, in this letter, that he hopes to visit them 
by and by ; he did not, however, at that time, ex- 
pect to appear among them as a prisoner. This 
was the fate awaiting him. Shortly after writing 
this epistle he returned from Corinth to Jerusa- 



EARLIER NEW TESTAMENT WRITINGS. 223 

lem, bearing a collection which had been gath- 
ered in Europe for the poor Christians of the 
mother church ; at Jerusalem he was arrested ; 
in that city and in Caesarea he was for a long time 
imprisoned; finally, probably in the spring of 61, 
he was sent as a prisoner to Rome, because he 
had appealed to the imperial court ; and here, for 
at least two years, he dwelt a prisoner, in lodg- 
ings of his own, chained by day and night to a 
Roman soldier. During this imprisonment, prob- 
ably in 62, he wrote the letters to the Colos- 
sians, the Ephesians, the Philippians, and Phile- 
mon. From the first imprisonment he seems to 
have been released; and to have gone westward 
as far as Spain, and eastward as far as Asia 
Minor, preaching the gospel. During this jour- 
ney he is supposed to Tiave written the first letter 
to Timothy and the letter to Titus. At length 
he was re-arrested, and brought to Rome where, 
in the spring of 68, just before his death, he 
wrote the second letter to Timothy, the last of 
his thirteen epistles. 

Much of this account of the late years of Paul's 
life, following the close of his first two years at 
Rome, where the narrative in the Acts of the 
Apostles abruptly leaves him, is traditional and 
conjectural ; I do not give it to you as indubitable 
history ; it furnishes the most reasonable explana- 
tion that has been suggested of that productive 
activity of his which finds its chief expression in 
the letters that bear his name. 



224 WH0 WROTE THE BIBLE? 

Of these letters it is impossible to give any ad- 
equate account in this place. Let it suffice to 
say that the principal theme of the two epistles 
to the Thessalonians is the expected return of 
Christ to earth ; that those to the Corinthians 
are largely occupied with questions of Christian 
casuistry ; that those to the Galatians and the 
Romans are the great doctrinal epistles unfold- 
ing the relation of Christianity to Judaism, and 
discussing the philosophy of the new creed ; that 
the Epistle to the Philippians is a luminous expo- 
sition of Christianity as a personal experience ; 
that those to the Colossians and the Ephesians 
are the defense of Christianity against the insid- 
ious errors of the Gnostics, and a wonderful rev- 
elation of the immanent Christ ; that the Epistle 
to Philemon is a letter of personal friendship, 
embodying a great principle of practical religion ; 
and that the letters to Timothy and Titus are the 
counsel of an aged apostle to younger men in the 
ministry. 

" May we go farther," with Archdeacon Farrar, 
" and attempt, in one or two words, a description 
of each separate epistle, necessarily imperfect 
from the very brevity, and yet perhaps expres- 
sive of some one main characteristic. If so we 
might perhaps say that the First Epistle to the 
Thessalonians is the epistle of consolation in 
the hope of Christ's return ; and the second of 
the immediate hindrances to that return, and our 
duties with regard to it. The First Epistle to 



EARLIER NEW TESTAMENT WRITING SI 225 

the Corinthians is the solution of practical prob- 
lems in the light of eternal principles ; the sec- 
ond, an impassioned defense of the apostle's im- 
pugned authority, his Apologia pro vita sua. 
The Epistle to the Galatians is the epistle of 
freedom from the bondage of the law ; that to the 
Romans of justification by faith. The Epistle 
to the Philippians is the epistle of Christian grat- 
itude and of Christian joy in sorrow ; that to the 
Colossians the epistle of Christ the universal 
Lord ; that to the Ephesians, so rich and many- 
sided, is the epistle of the ' heavenlies,' the epis- 
tle of grace, the epistle of ascension with the 
ascended Christ, the epistle of Christ in his one 
and universal church; that to Philemon the 
Magna Charta of Emancipation. The First 
Epistle to Timothy and that to Titus are the 
manuals of a Christian pastor ; the Second Epis- 
tle to Timothy is the last message of a Christian 
ere his death." 1 

The genuineness of several of these books has 
been assailed by modern criticism. The author- 
ship of Paul has been disputed in the cases of 
nine out of the thirteen epistles. The Epistle to 
the Galatians, that to the Romans, and the two 
to the Corinthians are undisputed ; all the rest 
have been spoken against. I have attended to 
these criticisms ; but the reasons urged for deny- 
ing the Pauline authorship of these epistles seem 
to me in many cases far-fetched and fanciful in 

1 The Life and Work of St Paul, chap. xlvi. 



226 WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

the extreme. Respecting the pastoral epistles, 
those to Timothy and Titus, it may be admitted 
that there are some difficulties. It is not easy 
for us to understand how there could have been 
developed in the churches at that early day so 
much of an ecclesiasticism as these letters as- 
sume ; and there is force in the suggestion that 
the peculiar errors against which some of these 
counsels are directed belong to a later day rather 
than to the apostolic age. To this it may be re- 
plied that ecclesiasticism is a weed which grows 
rapidly when once it has taken root, and that the 
germs of Gnosticism were in the church from the 
earliest day. And although the vocabulary of 
these epistles differs in rather a striking way, as 
Dr. Harnack has pointed out, 1 from that of Paul's 
other epistles, I can easily imagine that in famil- 
iar letters to his pupils he would drop into a dif- 
ferent style from that in which he wrote his more 
elaborate theological treatises. One could find 
in the letters of Macaulay or Charles Kingsley 
many words that he would not find in the history 
of the one or the sermons of the other. Putting 
all these objections together, I do not find in 
them any adequate reason for denying that these 
epistles were written by St. Paul. Indeed, it 
seems to me incredible that the Second Epistle 
of Timothy should have been written by any 
other hand than that which wrote the undoubted 
letters to the Corinthians and the Romans. 

1 Encyc. Brit. t art. " Pastoral Epistles." 



EARLIER NEW TESTAMENT WRITINGS. 227 

When we come to the other disputed epistles, 
those to the Thessalonians, the Ephesians, the 
Philippians, and the Colossians, I confess that the 
doubts of their genuineness seem to me the out- 
come of a willful dogmatism. What Archdeacon 
Farrar says of the cavils respecting the epistles 
to the Philippians applies to much of this theo- 
retic criticism : " The Tubingen school, in its 
earlier stages, attacked it with the monotonous 
arguments of their credulous skepticism. With 
those critics, if an epistle touches on points 
which make it accord with the narrative of the 
Acts it was forged to suit them ; if it seems to 
disagree with them the discrepancy shows that 
it is spurious. If the diction is Pauline it stands 
forth as a proved imitation ; if it is un-Pauline it 
could not have proceeded from the apostle." 1 
One grows weary with this reckless and carping 
skepticism, much of which springs from a theory 
of a permanent schism in the early church, — a 
theory which was mainly evolved from the inner 
consciousness of some mystical German philos- 
opher, and which has been utterly exploded. 

We may, then, receive as genuine the thirteen 
epistles ascribed to St. Paul; and we have good 
reason for believing that we have them in their 
integrity, substantially as he wrote them. 

The title of one of these epistles, that to the 
Ephesians, is, however, undoubtedly erroneous. 
As Mr. Conybeare says, the least disputable fact 

1 Life and Work of St. Paul, chap. xlvi. 



228 WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

about the letter is that it was not addressed to 
the Ephesians. For it is incredible that Paul 
should have described a church in whose fellow- 
ship he had lived and labored for two years as 
one of whose religious life he knew only by re- 
port (ch. i. 15) ; and it is strange that he should 
not have a single word of greeting to any of 
these Ephesian Christians. Several of the early 
Christian fathers testify that the words " at Ephe- 
sus " are omitted from the first verse of the man- 
uscript known to them. The two oldest manu- 
scripts now in existence, that of the Vatican and 
that known as the Sinaitic manuscript, both omit 
these words. The destination of the epistle is 
not indicated. The place filled by the words "at 
Ephesus" is left blank. Thus it reads : " Paul, an 
apostle of Christ Jesus through the will of God, 
to the saints which are and the faithful 

in Christ Jesus." Some of the old fathers expa- 
tiate on this title, drawing distinctions between 
the saints which are and the saints which seem 
to be, — an amusing example of exegetical thor- 
oughness. Undoubtedly the letter was designed 
as a circular letter to several churches in West- 
ern Asia, — Laodicea among the number ; and 
a blank was left in each copy made, in which the 
name of the church to which it was delivered 
might be entered. Some knowing copyist at a 
later day wrote the words "at Ephesus " into 
one of these copies ; and it is from this that the 
manuscript descended from which our translation 
was made. 



EARLIER NEW TESTAMENT WRITINGS. 22() 

That these letters of Paul were highly prized 
and carefully preserved by the churches to which 
they were written we cannot doubt ; and as from 
time to time messengers passed back and forth 
between the churches, copies were made of the 
letters for exchange. The church at Thessalo- 
nica would send a copy of its letter to the church 
at Philippi and to the church at Corinth and to 
the church at Ephesus, and would receive in re- 
turn copies of their letters ; and thus the writings 
of Paul early obtained a considerable distribution. 
We have an illustration of these exchanges in 
the closing words of the Epistle to the Colossians 
(iv. 1 6) : "And when this epistle hath been read 
among you, cause that it be read also in the 
church of the Laodiceans ; and that you also read 
the epistle from Laodicea." It is probable that 
the last-named epistle was the one of which we 
have just been speaking, called in our version, 
the Epistle to the Ephesians. 

The Epistle to the Hebrews is ascribed in its 
title to " Paul the Apostle/' But the title was 
added at a late date ; the Greek Testaments con- 
tain only the brief title "To the Hebrews/' leav- 
ing the question of authorship unsettled. Of all 
the other epistles ascribed to Paul his name is 
the first word ; this epistle does not announce its 
author. In the early church there was much con- 
troversy about it ; the Eastern Christians gener- 
ally ascribed it to Paul, while the Western church, 
until the fourth century, refused to recognize his 



230 WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

authorship. One sentence in the epistle (ch. ii. 
3) is supposed to signify that the writer was of 
the number of those who had received the gospel 
at second hand, and this was an admission that 
Paul always refused to make ; he steadily con- 
tended that his knowledge of the gospel was as 
direct and immediate and copious as that of any 
of the apostles. For these and other reasons it 
has been contended that the letter was written 
by some one not an apostle, but an associate and 
pupil of apostolic men ; the most plausible con- 
jecture ascribes it to Apollos. The date of it is 
not easily fixed ; it was probably written before 
the destruction of Jerusalem ; such an elaborate 
discussion of the Jewish ritual would scarcely 
have been made after the temple was destroyed, 
without any reference to the fact of its destruc- 
tion. 

Following the letter to the Hebrews in our 
New Testament are seven epistles ascribed to 
four different authors, James, Peter, John, and 
Jude. These are commonly called the " Catholic 
Epistles," — catholic meaning general or univer- 
sal, — since they are not addressed to any one 
congregation, but to the whole church, to Chris- 
tians in general. Two of them, however, the 
Second and Third of John, hardly deserve the 
designation, for they are addressed to individuals. 

The author of the Epistle of James is not easily 
identified. There are numerous Jameses in the 
New Testament history ; we do not readily dis- 



EARLIER NEW TESTAMENT WRITINGS. 23 1 

tinguish them. It was not James the son of 
Zebedee, for he was put to death by Herod only 
six or seven years after the death of our Lord 
(Acts xii. 2). Probably this was the one named 
James the Lord's brother, who was a near rela- 
tive of Jesus, brother or cousin, and who was the 
leading man — perhaps they called him bishop — 
of the church at Jerusalem. He may, also, be 
identical with that James the son of Alpheus, 
who was one of the apostles. The letter was is- 
sued at an early day, probably before the year 60. 
It was addressed to the " twelve tribes which are 
of the Dispersion," — that was the name by which 
the Jews scattered through Asia and Europe 
were generally known. To Christians who had 
been Jews, therefore, this letter was written ; in 
this respect it is to be classed with the letter to 
the Hebrews ; but in the tenor of its teaching it 
is wholly unlike that letter ; instead of putting 
emphasis on the ritual and symbolical elements 
of religion, it leaves these wholly on one side, 
and makes the ethical contents of the Christian 
teaching the matter of supreme concern. There 
is more of applied Christianity in this than in 
any other of the epistles ; and both in style and 
in substance we are reminded by it of the teach- 
ing of our Lord more strongly than by any other 
portion of the New Testament. 

The First Epistle of Peter is addressed to the 
same class of persons, — to " the elect who are 
sojourners of the Dispersion " in various prov- 



232 WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

inces of Asia Minor. The only intimation of the 
locality of the writing is contained in one of the 
concluding verses : " She that is in Babylon, 
elect together with you, saluteth you. ,, What 
Babylon is this ? Is it the famous capital of the 
Euphrates ? So some have supposed, for there 
is a tradition that Peter journeyed to the distant 
East and founded Christian churches among the 
Jews, who, in large numbers, were dwelling there. 
Others take it to be the mystical Babylon, — 
Rome upon her seven hills. This theory helps to 
support the contention, for which there is small 
evidence, that Peter was the first bishop of Rome. 
The first conjecture has a firmer basis. But who 
is "she" that sends her salutations to these 
Asian saints ? Was it the church or the wife of 
the apostle ? Either interpretation is difficult ; 
I cannot choose between them. Of the origin 
of this letter we know little ; but there is noth- 
ing in it inconsistent with the unbroken tradi- 
tion which ascribes it to the impetuous leader of 
the apostolic band. Like the Epistle of James it 
is full of a strenuous morality ; while it does not 
disregard the essentials of Christian doctrine it 
puts the emphasis on Christian conduct. 

The Second Epistle of Peter is the one book 
of the New Testament concerning whose genu- 
ineness there is most doubt. From the earliest 
days the canonicity of this book has been dis- 
puted. It is not mentioned by any early Chris- 
tian writer before the third century ; and Origen, 



EARLIER NEW TESTAMENT WRITINGS. 233 

who is the first to allude to the book, testifies 
that its genuineness has been doubted. The 
early versions do not contain it ; Eusebius marks 
it doubtful ; Erasmus and Calvin, in later times, 
regarded it as a dubious document. It seems al- 
most incredible, with such witnesses against it, 
that the book should be genuine ; but if it is not 
the work of St. Peter it is a fraudulent writing, 
for it openly announces him as its author and re- 
fers to his first epistle. There is a remarkable 
similarity between this letter and the short Epis- 
tle of Jude ; it would appear that this must be an 
imitation and enlargement of that, or that a con- 
densation of this. There are some passages in 
this book with which we could ill afford to part, 
— with which, indeed, we never shall part ; for 
whether they were written by Peter or by an- 
other they express clear and indubitable verities ; 
and even though the author, like that Balaam 
whom he quotes, may have been no true prophet, 
he was constrained, even as Balaam was, to utter 
some wholesome and stimulating truth. 

The three epistles of John are the last words 
of the disciple that Jesus loved. The evidence 
of their genuineness, particularly of the first of 
them, is abundant and convincing ; Polycarp, who 
was John's pupil and friend, quotes from this 
book, and there is an unbroken chain of testi- 
mony from the early fathers respecting it. Of 
course those who have determined, for dogmatic 
reasons, to reject the Fourth Gospel, are bound 



234 WH0 WROTE THE BIBLE? 

to reject these epistles also ; but that procedure 
is wholly unwarranted, as we shall see in the 
next chapter. These epistles were probably 
written from Ephesus during the last years of the 
first century. The first is a meditation on the 
great fact of the incarnation and its mystic rela- 
tion to the life of men ; it sounds the very depths 
of that wonderful revelation which was made to 
the world in the person and work of Jesus Christ. 
The other two are personal letters, wherein the 
fragrance of a gracious friendship still lingers, 
and in which we see how the spirit of Christ was 
beginning, even then, to transfigure with its be- 
nignant gentleness the courtesies of life. 

The Book of Jude, the last of the epistles, is 
one of whose author we have little knowledge. 
He styles himself " the brother of James," but 
that, as we have seen, is a vague description. 
Of the close relation between this letter and Sec- 
ond Peter I have spoken. It is not in the early 
Syriac version ; Eusebius and Origen question 
it, and Chrysostom does not mention it ; we may 
fairly doubt whether it came from the hand of 
any apostolic witness. One feature of this short 
letter deserves mention ; the writer quotes from 
one of the old apocryphal books, the Book of 
Enoch, treating it as Scripture. If a New Tes- 
tament citation authenticates an ancient writing, 
Enoch must be regarded as an inspired book. 
We must either reject Jude or accept Enoch, or 
abandon the rule that makes a New Testament 



EARLIER NEW TESTAMENT WRITINGS, 235 

citation the proof of Old Testament canonicity. 
The abandonment of the rule is the simplest and 
the most rational solution of the difficulty. 

I have now run rapidly over the history of 
twenty-one of the twenty-seven books of the New 
Testament, — all of the Epistles of the inspired 
book. The end of the first century found these 
books scattered through Europe and Asia, each 

/ probably in possession of the church to which it 
had been sent ; those addressed to individuals 

(probably in the hands of their children or chil- 
dren's children. Some exchanges, such as I have 
suggested, had taken place ; and some churches 
might have possessed several of these apostolic 
letters, but there was yet no collection of them. 
Of the beginning of this collection of the New 
Testament Writings I shall speak in the chapter 
upon the canon. 

I said at the beginning that these writers prob- 
ably had no thought when they composed these 
letters that they were contributing to a volume 
that would outlast empires, and be a manual of 
study and a guide of conduct in lands to the 
world then unknown, and in generations farther 
from them than they were from Abraham. But 
each of them uttered in sincerity the word that 
to him seemed the word of the hour ; and God 
who gives life to the seed gave vitality to these 
true words, so that they are as full of divine en- 
ergy to-day as ever they were. It is easy to cavil 
at a sentence here and there, or to pick flaws 



236 WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

in their logic ; but the question always returns, 
What kind of fruit have they borne ? " By their 
fruits ye shall know them. ,, One of the most 
precious gifts of God to men is contained in these 
twenty-one brief letters. It is not in equal meas- 
ure in all of them, but there is none among them 
that does not contain some portion of it. The 
treasure is in earthen vessels ; it was so when 
the apostles were alive and speaking; it is so 
now ; it always was and always will be so ; but 
the treasure is there, and he who with open mind 
and reverent spirit seeks for it will find it there, 
and will know that the excellency of the power is 
of God, and not of men. 



CHAPTER IX. 

THE ORIGIN OF THE GOSPELS. 

We have arrived in our study of the Sacred 
Scriptures at the threshold of the most interest- 
ing and the most momentous topic which is pre- 
sented to the student of the Biblical literature, — 
the question of the origin of the Gospels. These 
Gospels contain the record of the life and the 
death of Jesus Christ, that marvelous Personality 
in whom the histories, the prophecies, the lit- 
urgies of the Old Testament are fulfilled, and 
from whom the growing light and freedom and 
happiness of eighteen Christian centuries are 
seen to flow. Most certain it is that the history 
of the most enlightened lands of earth during 
these Christian centuries could not be under- 
stood without constant reference to the power 
which came into the world when Jesus Christ 
was born. Some tremendous social force made 
its appearance just then by which the whole life 
of mankind has been affected ever since that day. 
The most powerful institutions, the most benign 
influences which are at work in the world to-day, 
can be followed back to that period as surely as 
any great river can be followed up to the springs 



238 WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

from which it takes its rise. If we had not these 
four Gospels we should be compelled to seek for 
an explanation of the chief phenomena of modern 
history. " We trace," says Mr. Horton, " this 
astonishing influence back to that life, and if we 
knew nothing at all about it, but had to construct 
it out of the creative imagination, we should have 
to figure to ourselves facts, sayings, and impres- 
sions which would account for what has flowed 
from it. Thus, if the place where this biography 
comes were actually a blank, we should be able 
to surmise something of what ought to be there, 
just as astronomers surmised the existence of a 
new planet, and knew in what quarter of the 
heavens to look for it Jby observing and register- 
ing the influences which retarded or deflected the 
movements of the other planets." 1 

That place is not a blank ; it is filled with the 
fourfold record of the Life from which all these 
mighty influences have flowed. Must not this 
record prove to be the most inspiring theme open 
to human investigation ? Is it any wonder that 
more study has been expended upon this theme 
than upon any other which has ever claimed the 
attention of men ? 

What do we know of the origin of this four- 
fold record ? Origin it must have had like every 
other book, an origin in time and space. That 
there are divine elements in it the most of us 
believe ; but the form in which we have it is a 

1 Inspiration and the Bible y p. 65. 



THE ORIGIN OF THE GOSPELS. 239 

purely human form, and it would be worthless to 
us if it were not in purely human form. The sen- 
tences of which it is composed were constructed 
by human minds, and were written down by 
human hands on parchment or papyrus leaves. 
When, and where, and by whom ? These are the 
questions now before us. 

Let us go back to the last half of the second 
century and see what traces of these books we 
can find. 

Irenaeus, Bishop of Lyons, in France, who died 
about 200, speaks "distinctly of these four Gospels, 
which, he declares, are equal in authority to the 
Old Testament Scriptures, and which he ascribes 
to the four authors whose names they now bear. 
With the fanciful reasoning then common among 
Christian writers, he finds a reason in the four 
quarters of the globe why there should have been 
four Gospels and no more. 1 

C lement of A lexandria was living at the same 
time. He also quotes liberally in his writings 
from all these four books, of which he speaks as 
" the four Gospels that have been handed down 
to us." 

Tertullian^jiyho was born in Carthage about 
160, also quotes all these Gospels as authoritative 
Christian writings. 

It is clear, therefore, that in the West, the East, 
and the South, — in all quarters where Chris- 
tianity was then established, — the four Gospels 
were recognized and read in the churches in the 



240 WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

latter half of the second century. Let us go back 
a little farther. 

Justin Martyr was born at Rome about the 
year ioo, and was writing most abundantly from 
his fortieth to his forty-fifth year. In one of the 
books which he has left us, in describing the 
customs of the Christians, he uses the following 
language : " On the day which is called Sun- 
day there is an assembly in the same place of all 
who live in cities or in country districts, and the 
records of the apostles or the writings of the 
prophets are read as long as we wave time. Then 
the reader concludes, and the president verbally 
instructs and exhorts us to the imitation of these 
excellent things. Then we all rise up together 
and offer our prayers." In another place he 
speaks of something commanded by " the apos- 
tles in the records which they made, and which 
are called Gospels." Justin does not say how 
many of these Gospels the church in his day pos- 
sessed, but we find in his writings unmistakable 
quotations from at least three of them. Dr. Ed- 
win Abbott, of London, whom Mrs. Humphry 
Ward refers to as master of all the German 
learning on this subject, says that it would be 
possible " to reconstruct from his (Justin's) quo- 
tations a fairly connected narrative of the incar- 
nation, birth, teaching, crucifixion, resurrection, 
and ascension of the Lord;" that this narrative 
is all found in the three Synoptic Gospels, and 
that Justin quotes no words of Christ and refers 



THE ORIGIN OF THE GOSPELS. 24 1 

to no incidents that are not found in these Gos- 
pels. 1 

We may fully accept Dr. Abbott's testimony 
so far as the quotations of Justin from the first 
three Gospels are concerned ; but his arguments, 
which are intended to prove that there is no cer- 
tain reference to the fourth Gospel in Justin's 
works, appear to me inconclusive. When Justin 
says : " For indeed Christ also said, ' except ye 
be born again, ye shall not enter into the king- 
dom of heaven/ but that it is impossible for those 
who were once born to enter into their mother's 
womb is plain to all," he is quoting words that 
'are found in the fourth Gospel, and not in any of 
the other three. The attempt to show that he 
found these and similar citations in the same 
sources from which the author of the fourth Gos- 
pel derived them is not successful. 

Several indirect lines of evidence tend to con- 
firm the belief that Justin possessed all four of 
our Gospels. This, then, carries us back to the 
first half of the second century. Between 100 
and 150 Papias of Hierapolis, Clement ofJELome, 
and Polyca rp of Smyrn a were writing. Papias, 
who wrote about 130-140 a. d., composed five 
books or commentaries on what he calls "The 
Oracles of the Lord." He gives us some account 
of the origin of at least two of these Gospels. 
" Mark," he says, " was the interpreter of Peter ; " 
" Matthew wrote his scriptures {logia) in Hebrew, 

1 Encyc. Brit., vol. x. p. 817. 



242 WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

and each man interpreted them as best he coiilcl." 
" Interpreted " here evidently means translated. 
Elsewhere he repeats a tradition of " the elder," 
by which word he apparently means the Apostle 
John, whom he may have known, in these words : 
" Mark, having become Peter's interpreter, wrote 
down accurately all that he remembered, — not, 
however, in order, — both the words and the 
deeds of Christ. For he never heard the Lord* 
nor attached himself to him, but later on, as I 
said, attached himself to Peter, who used to adapt 
his lessons to the needs of the occasion, but not 
as though he was composing a connected treatise 
of the discourses of our Lord ; so that Mark com- 
mitted no error in writing down some matters 
just as he remembered them. For one object 
was in his thoughts, to make no omissions and 
no false statements in what he heard." * This is a 
perfect description of the Gospel of Mark as we 
have it in our hands to-day. And the testimony 
of Papias to its authorship, and to the spirit and 
purpose of the author, is significant and memora- 
ble. Evidence of this nature would be regarded 
as decisive in any other case of literary criticism. 

Polyrar^ 
the Apostle, was bo rn about th e y ear 69, and suf- 
~fered martrydom about 155. In his writings we 
find no express mention of the Gospels, but we 
do find verbally accurate quotations from them. 
It is clear that he was acquainted with the books. 
1 Quoted by Abbott, as above. 



THE ORIGIN OF THE GOSPELS. 243 

Polycarp was_the_ teacher of Irengeus of Lyons 
whom I _ ,£rst_ quoted^ and he was the pupil and 
friend oL-SLjohn and the other apostles ; and 
Irenaeus, who quotes all these Gospels so freely, 
bears this testimony respecting Polycarp, in a 
letter which he wrote to Florinus. 

" I saw you, when I was yet a boy, in Lower 
Asia with Polycarp. ... I could even point out 
now the place where the blessed Polycarp sat and 
spoke, and describe his going out and coming in, 
his manner of life, his personal appearance, the 
addresses he delivered to the multitude, how he 
spoke of his intercourse with John, and with the 
others who had seen the Lord, and how he re- 
called their words, and everything that he had 
heard about the Lord, about his miracles and his 
teaching. Polycarp told us, as one who had re- 
ceived it from those who had seen the Word of 
Life with their own eyes, and all this in complete 
harmony with the Scriptures. To this I then lis- 
tened, through the mercy of God vouchsafed to 
me, with all eagerness, and wrote it not on paper, 
but in my heart, and still by the grace of God I 
ever bring it into fresh remembrance." 

These living witnesses give us solid ground for 
our statement that the Gospels — the first three 
of them at any rate — were in existence during 
the last years of the first century. Indeed, not 
to prolong this search for the origin of the books, 
it is now freely admitted, by many of the most 
radical critics, that the first three Gospels were 



244 WH() WROTE THE BIBLE? 

written before the year 80, and that Mark must 
have been written before 70. 

It is interesting to contrast the course of New 
Testament criticism with that engaged upon the 
Old Testament. In the study of the origin of 
the Pentateuch the gravitation of opinion has 
been steadily downward, toward a later date, so 
that the great majority of scholars are now cer- 
tain that the books must have been put into their 
present form long after the time of Moses. In 
the study of the origin of the Gospels the date 
has been steadily pushed upward, to the very age 
of the apostles. The earlier critics, Strauss and 
Baur, insisted that they must have appeared 
much later, far on in the second century ; but the 
more recent and more scientific criticism has de- 
molished or badly discredited their theories, and 
has carried the Gospels back to the last part of 
the first century. 

Are we entitled, then, to say that these Gospels 
were written by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John ? 
We should be cautious, no doubt, in making such 
a statement. The Gospels themselves are not so 
explicit on this point as we could desire. Their 
titles do not warrant this assertion. It is not 
"The Gospel of St. Matthew" or "The Gospel 
of St. Mark ; " it is the " Gospel according to St. 
Matthew " or St. Mark. The import of the title 
would be fully satisfied with the explanation that 
this is the story as Matthew or Mark was wont to 
tell it, ]Dut into form by some person or friend of 



THE ORIGIN OF THE GOSPELS. 245 

his^in his last days, or even after his death. But 
the testimony of Papias, to which I have referred, 
is to my own mind good evidence that these Gos- 
pels were written by the men who bear their 
names. In the case of Luke, as we shall pres- 
ently see, the evidence is much stronger. And 
after going over the evidence as carefully as I am 
able, the theory that the four Gospels were writ- 
ten by the men whose names they bear, all of 
whom were the contemporaries of our Lord, and 
two of whom were his apostles, seems to me, on 
the whole, the best supported by the whole vol- 
ume of evidence. The case is not absolutely 
clear ; perhaps it was left somewhat obscure for 
the very purpose of stimulating study. At all 
events, the study which has been given to the 
subject has confirmed rather than weakened the 
belief that the Gospels are contemporary records 
of the life of Christ. Mr. Norton, a distinguished 
Unitarian scholar, sums up the evidence as fol- 
lows : " It consists in the indisputable fact that 
throughout a community of millions of individ- 
uals, scattered over Europe, Asia, and Africa, the 
Gospels were regarded with the highest rever- 
ence, as the works of those to whom they are 
ascribed, at so early a period that there could be 
no difficulty in determining whether they were 
genuine or not, and when every intelligent Chris- 
tian must have been deeply interested to ascer- 
tain the truth. . . . This fact is itself a phe- 
nomenon admitting of no explanation except that 



246 WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

the four Gospels had all been handed down as 
genuine from the apostolic age, and had every- 
where accompanied our religion as it spread 
throughout the world." 

When we turn from the external or historical 
evidence for the genuineness of the Gospels to 
study their internal structure and their relations 
to one another, we come upon some curious facts. 
These Gospels, in th^JioniiJiLwhi^ 
them, are written in the G reek language. But 
the~Gl^eETanguage was not the vernacular of the 
Jews in Palestine when our Lord was on the 
earth ; the language which was then spoken by 
them, as I have before explained, was the Ara- 
maic. It is true that Palestine was, to some ex- 
tent, a bilingual country, — like Wales, one writer 
suggests, where the English and the Welsh lan- 
guages are now freely spoken, — that Aramaic 
and Greek were used indifferently. I can hardly 
imagine that a people as tenacious of their own 
institutions as the Jews could have adopted 
Greek as generally as the Welsh have adopted 
the English tongue. Even in Wales, if a Welsh- 
man were speaking to a congregation of his coun- 
trymen on any important topic, he would be 
likely to speak the Welsh language. And much 
more probable does it seem to me that the dis- 
courses and the common conversation of Jesus 
must have been spoken in the vernacular. The 
discourses and sayings of our Lord, as reported 
for us in these Gospels, are not therefore given 



THE ORIGIN OF THE GOSPELS. 247 

us in the words that he used. We have a trans- 
lation of his words from the Aramaic into the 
Greek, made either by the write rs of the Gospels. 
or by some onejn their day. We have quoted 
the testimony of Papias, that the Gospel of Mat- 
thew was originally written in Hebrew (by which 
he undoubtedly means Aramaic), and that each 
one interpreted it as best he could ; and if this 
be true, then that copy first made by Matthew 
did contain many of our Lord's very words. But 
that Aramaic copy has never been seen since 
that day ; we have no manuscript of any New 
Testament book except in the Greek language. 
There are a few cases in which the writers of the 
Gospels have preserved for us the very words 
used by Christ. Thus in the healing of the deaf 
man in the neighborhood of Decapolis, of which 
Mark tells us (vii. 34), Jesus touched his ears, and 
said unto him, "Ephphatha," that is, "Be opened." 
The Evangelist gives us the Aramaic word which 
Jesus used, and translates it for his readers into 
Greek. Likewise in the healing of the ruler's 
daughter (Mark v. 41) he took her by the hand, 
and said unto her, " Talitha cumi, which is, being 
interpreted," the Evangelist explains, " Damsel, 
I say unto thee, Arise." Doubtless most readers 
get the impression that our Lord used here some 
cabalistic words in a foreign tongue ; the fact is 
that these are the words of the common speech 
of the people ; only the Evangelist seems to have 
thought them especially memorable, and he has 



248 WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

given us not merely, as he generally does, a trans- 
lation into the Greek of our Lord's words, but the 
Aramaic words themselves, with their meaning 
appended in a Greek phrase. The same is true 
of our Lord's words on the cross : " Eli, Eli, 
lama sabachthani ?" These are Aramaic words, 
the very words that Jesus uttered. The Roman 
soldiers who stood near might not know what he 
meant ; but every Jew who distinctly heard him 
must have understood him, for he was speaking 
in no foreign tongue, but in the language of his 
own people. 

When we speak, therefore, of the Greek as the 
original language of the Gospels, we do not 
speak with entire accuracy. The Greek does not 
give us our Lord's original words. These we 
have not, except in the cases I have named, and 
a few others less important. No man on earth 
knows or ever will know what were the precise 
words that our Lord used in his Sermon on the 
Mount, in his conversation with the woman at 
the well, in his last discourses with his disciples. 
We have every reason to believe that the sub; 
stance of what he said is faithfully preserved for 
us ; the fourfold record, so marvelously accord- 
ant in its report of his teachings, makes this per- 
fectly clear. But his very words we have not, 
and this fact itself is the most convincing dis- 
proof of the dogma of verbal inspiration. If our 
Lord had thought it important that we should 
have his very words he would have seen to it that 



THE ORIGIN OF THE GOSPELS. 249 

his very words were preserved and recorded for 
us, instead of that Greek translation of his words, 
made by his followers, which we now possess. 
These evangelists could have written Aramaic, 
doubtless did write Aramaic; and they would 
certainly have kept our Lord's discourses and 
sayings in the Aramaic original if they had been 
instructed to do so. The fact that they were not 
instructed to do so, but were permitted to give 
his teachings to the world in other words than 
those in which they were spoken, shows how lit- 
tle there was of modern literalism in Christ's con- 
ception of the work of revelation. 

The first three of these Gospels exhibit many 
striking similarities ; they appear to give, from 
somewhat different standpoints, a condensed and 
complete synopsis of the events of our Lord's life ; 
therefore they are called the Synoptic Gospels. 
The fourth Gospel differs widely from them in 
matter and form. It will be more convenient, 
therefore, to speak first of the Synoptic Gospels, 
Matthew, Mark, and Luke. 

The singular fact respecting these Gospels is 
the combination in them of likeness and differ- 
ence. A considerable portion of each one of 
them is to be found, word for word, in one or 
both of the others ; other considerable portions 
of each are not found in either of the others ; 
some passages are nearly alike, but slightly differ- 
ent in two or in all of them. Did these three au- 
thors write independently each of the other ? If 



25O WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

so, how does it happen that their phraseology is 
so often identical ? Did they copy one from an- 
other ? If so, why did they copy so little ? Why, 
for example, did each one of them omit so much 
that the others had written ? And why are there 
so many slight differences in passages that are 
nearly identical ? If we accepted the theory of 
verbal inspiration, we might offer some sort of 
explanation of this phenomenon. We might say 
that the Holy Ghost dictated these words, and 
that that is the end of it ; since no explanation 
can be offered of the reason why the Holy Ghost 
chose one form of expression rather than an- 
other. UBut the Gospels themselves contain 
abundant proof that the Holy Ghost did not dic- 
tate the words employed by these writers?) 

The two genealogies of our Lord, one in Mat- 
thew and the other in Luke, are widely different. 
From Abraham to David they substantially 
agree ; from David to Christ, Matthew makes 
twenty-eight generations, and Luke thirty-eight ; 
only two of the intermediate names in the one 
table are found in the other ; the one list makes 
Jacob the father of Joseph, and the other declares 
that the name of Joseph's father was Heli. All 
sorts of explanations, some plausible and others 
preposterous, have been offered of this difficulty; 
the one explanation that cannot be allowed is 
that these words were dictated by Omniscience. 

In the story of the healing of the blind near 
Jericho, Matthew and Mark expressly say that 



THE ORIGIN OF THE GOSPELS, 2$ I 

the healing took place as Christ was departing 
from the city ; Luke that it was before he en- 
tered it. Matthew says that there were two 
blind men ; Mark and Luke that there was but 
one. About these details of the transaction there 
is some mistake, — that is the only thing to be 
said about it. The various explanations offered 
are weak and inadmissible. But what difference 
does it make to anybody whether the healing 
took place before or after Jesus entered the city, 
or whether there was one man healed or two. 
The moral and spiritual lessons of the story are 
just as distinct in the one case as in the other ; 
and it is these moral and spiritual values only 
that inspiration is intended to secure. 

Similarly, Luke (iv. 38-39) expressly tells us 
that the healing of Peter's wife's mother took 
place before the calling of Simon and Andrew ; 
while Matthew and Mark tell us with equal ex- 
plicitness that the calling took place before the 
healing. No reconciliation is possible here ; 
either Luke or Matthew and Mark must have 
misplaced these events. 

So in Matthew xxvii. 9, certain words are said 
to have been spoken by Jeremiah the prophet. 
These words are not in Jeremiah ; they are in 
Zechariah xi. 13. It is simply a slip of the 
Evangelist's memory. 

So in the record of the inscription on the cross 
when Jesus was crucified. Each of the four 
Evangelists copies it for us in a different form. 



252 WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

The meaning is the same in all the cases, but the 
copy was not exactly made by some of them, per- 
haps not by any of them. If the Holy Ghost 
had dictated the words, they must, in a case like 
this, have been exactly alike in all the Evangel- 
ists. The substance is given, but the inexactness 
of the copy shows that the words could not have 
been dictated by Omniscience. It is sometimes 
explained that this inscription was in three lan- 
guages, Greek, Latin, and Hebrew, and that we 
may have the exact translations of the different 
inscriptions. This might account for three of 
them, but not for four. 

From these and many other similar facts, we 
know that the theory of verbal inspiration is not 
true ; but that these Evangelists were allowed to 
state each in his own language the facts known 
by him concerning our Lord, and that nothing 
like infallible accuracy was so much as attempted. 
The only inspiration that can be claimed for 
them is that which brought the important facts 
to their remembrance, and guarded them against 
serious errors of history or doctrine. 

But now the question returns, if they wrote 
these Gospels in their own language and inde- 
pendently of one another, how happens it that 
they use so often the very same words and 
phrases and sentences. Take, for example, the 
following verses from parallel narratives in Mat- 
thew and in Mark, concerning the calling of the 
first apostles : — 



THE ORIGIN OF THE GOSPELS. 



253 



Matthew iv. 18-22. 

And walking by the sea of 
Galilee, he saw two brethren, 
Simon who is called Peter, 
and Andrew his brother, cast- 
ing a net into. the sea; for 
they were fishers. And he 
saith unto them, Come ye 
after me, and I will make you 
fishers of men. And they 
straightway left the nets, and 
followed him. And going 
on from thence he saw two 
other brethren, James the 
son of Zebedee, and John his 
brother, in the boat with 
Zebedee their father, mend- 
ing their nets ; and he called 
them. And they straight- 
way left the boat and their 
father, and followed him. 



Mark i. 16-20. 

And passing along by the 
sea of Galilee, he saw Simon 
and Andrew the brother of 
Simon casting a net in the 
sea: for they were fishers. 
And Jesus said unto them, 
Come ye after me, and I will 
make you to become fishers 
of men. And straightway 
they left the nets, and fol- 
lowed him. And going on a 
little further, he saw James 
the son of Zebedee, and John 
his brother, who also were 
in the boat mending the 
nets. And straightway he 
called them : and they left 
their father Zebedee in the 
boat with the hired servants, 
and went after him. 



There are slight verbal variations, but in general 
the words are the same, and the corresponding 
sentences are in precisely the same order in both 
narratives. Now, as Archbishop Thomson says, 
in Smith's " Bible Dictionary/' " The verbal and 
material agreement of the first three Evangel- 
ists is such as does not occur in any other au- 
thors who have written independently of each 
other." 

Besides many such passages which are sub- 
stantially alike but verbally or syntactically dif- 
ferent, there are quite a number which are iden- 



254 WH0 WROTE THE BIBLE? 

tical, word for word, and phrase for phrase. 
These verbal agreements occur most frequently, 
as is natural, in the reports of our Lord's dis- 
courses and sayings ; but they also occur in the 
descriptive and narrative portions of the gospel. 
This is the fact which is so difficult to reconcile 
with the theory that the books were produced by 
independent writers. 

Suppose three competent and truthful reporters 
are employed by you to write an exact and un- 
varnished report of some single transaction 
which has occurred, and which each of them has 
witnessed. Each is required to do his work with- 
out any conference with the others. When 
these reports are brought to you, if they are very 
faithful and accurate for substance, you will not 
be surprised to find some circumstances men- 
tioned by each that are not mentioned by either 
of the others, and it will be strange if there are 
not some important discrepancies. But if on 
reading them, you find that the reports, taken 
sentence by sentence, are almost identical, — that 
there is only an occasional difference in a word 
or in the order of a phrase, — then you at once 
say, "These reporters must have been copying 
from some other reporter's note-book, or else 
they must have been comparing notes ; they 
could not have written with such verbal agree- 
ment if they had written independently." Sup- 
pose, for example, that each of the three reports 
began in just these words : " The first object 



THE ORIGIN OF THE GOSPELS. 255 

that attracted my notice on entering the door 
was a chair.' ' Now it is extremely improbable 
that all these writers, writing independent re- 
ports of a transaction, should begin in the same 
way by mentioning the first object that attracted 
the attention of each. And even if they should 
so begin, it is wholly beyond the range of possi- 
bilities that they should all select from all the 
multitude of the words in the English language 
the very same words in which to make this state- 
ment ; and should put these words in the very 
same order, out of the multitude of different or- 
ders into which they could grammatically be put. 
There is not one chance in a million that such a 
coincidence would occur. But such coincidences 
occur very often in the first three Gospels. How 
can we account for it ? We say that they wrote 
independently, that their words were not dic- 
tated to them ; how does it happen that there is 
so much verbal agreement ? 

We may get some hint of the manner in which 
these biographies were produced if we turn to 
the beginning of Luke's Gospel : — 

"Forasmuch as many have taken in hand to 
draw up a narrative concerning those matters 
which have been fulfilled among us, even as they 
delivered them unto us, which from the beginning 
were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word, it 
seemed good to me also, having traced the course 
of all things accurately from the first, to write 
unto thee in order, most excellent Theophilus; 



256 WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

that thou mightest know the certainty concern- 
ing the things wherein thou wast instructed." 
The marginal reading of this last phrase is, 
" which thou wast taught by word of mouth." 
This is the more exact meaning of the Greek. 
The passage contains these statements : — 

1. Theophilus had been orally taught the Gos- 
pels. 

2. Many persons, not apostles, had undertaken 
to write out parts of the gospel story, as they 
had heard it from eyewitnesses and ministers of 
the word. 

3. Luke also, as one who had full and accu- 
rate information, had determined to reduce his 
knowledge to an orderly written narrative, for 
the benefit of his friend Theophilus. 

It appears from this clear statement that writ- 
ten memoranda of the discourses of our Lord and 
of the incidents of his life had been made by 
many persons. Numbers of these had under- 
taken to combine their memoranda with their 
recollections in an orderly statement. This fact 
itself shows how powerful an impression had 
been made by our Lord's life and death upon the 
people of Palestine. Everything relating to him 
was treasured with the utmost care ; Luke, for 
his part, believing that he had gained by careful 
investigation sufficient knowledge to warrant the 
undertaking, sets out to collect the facts and pre- 
sent them in a consecutive and intelligible liter- 
ary form. Yet Luke, in this announcement of 



THE ORIGIN OF THE GOSPELS. 257 

his purpose, betrays no consciousness that he is 
using any different powers from those employed 
by the many others of whom he speaks. Rather 
does he most clearly rank himself with them, as 
one of many gleaners in this fruitful field. He 
does claim thoroughness and painstaking accu- 
racy ; I believe that every honest man will con- 
cede his claim. 

This, then, was the way in which Luke went 
to work to write his Gospel. This is not guess- 
work ; it is the explicit statement of the author 
himself. Have we not good reason for believing 
that the Gospels of Matthew and Mark were com- 
posed in much the same way ? 

In addition to the written memoranda of 
Christ's life which were in the hands of the apos- 
tles, and of many others, there was another 
source from which the Evangelists must have 
drawn. Luke alludes to it when he speaks of 
the fact that Theophilus had received much of his 
narrative "by word of mouth." There was, un- 
questionably, an oral gospel, covering the larger 
part of the deeds and the words of Jesus, which 
had been widely circulated in Palestine and in 
the whole missionary field. When it is said 
(Acts viii. 1-4 ; xi. 19) that they which were 
scattered abroad by the early persecutions went 
everywhere preaching the word, it must be un- 
derstood that they went about simply telling the 
story of Jesus, his birth, his life, his deeds, his 
words, his death upon the cross. Sometimes, 



258 WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

when preaching to Jews, they would show the 
correspondence between his life and the Old Tes- 
tament prophecies, to prove that he was the Mes- 
siah ; but the substance of their preaching was 
the telling over and over again of the story of 
Jesus. It was upon this oral gospel that the 
apostles and the first missionaries mainly relied. 
What they desired to do was to make known as 
speedily and as rapidly as possible the words of 
his lips and the facts of his life. And it is highly 
probable that before they set out on these mis- 
sionary tours, they took great pains to rehearse 
to one another the story which they were going 
forth to tell. " The apostles," says Professor 
Westcott, "guided by the promised Spirit of 
truth, remained together in Jerusalem in close 
communion for a period long enough to shape a 
common narrative, and to fix it with requisite 
surroundings." 

It was these concerted recollections and re- 
hearsals that gave to so many passages of the 
gospel its identity in form. Some of the sen- 
tences often and devoutly repeated were remem- 
bered by all, word for word ; in some of them 
there were verbal differences and discrepancies, 
as they were repeated by one and another. The 
verbal resemblances as well as the verbal differ- 
ences are thus explained by this theory of an oral 
gospel, prepared at first for preaching by the 
apostles, and held only in their memory. 

The preservation of so many passages in words 



THE ORIGIN OF THE GOSPELS. 259 

and sentences nearly or exactly similar is nothing 
miraculous. Even in our own time there are, 
as we are told, secret societies whose ritual has 
never been written, but has been handed down 
with nearly verbal accuracy, from generation to 
generation. For the Hebrews, who were a peo- 
ple at this time greatly disinclined to write, and 
thoroughly practiced in remembering and repeat- 
ing the sayings of their wise men, this task would 
not be difficult. 

The apostles and the early evangelists, as West- 
cott suggests, were preachers, not historians, not 
pamphleteers. They believed in living witnesses 
more than in transmitted documents. They did 
not write out the record at first, partly because 
they were naturally disinclined to write, and 
partly, no doubt, because they expected the im- 
mediate return of our Lord to earth. Their gos- 
pel was therefore for many years a spoken and 
not a written word. As they went on repeating 
it, changes would occur in the repetition of the 
words ; to the remembrance of one and another 
of them the Spirit of truth would bring facts and 
circumstances that they did not think of at first ; 
words, phrases, gestures of our Lord would re- 
appear in the memory of each, and thus the 
narrative became varied and shaded with the per- 
sonal peculiarities of the several writers. 

Years passed, and the expected return of the 
Lord to earth did not take place. The churches 
were spreading over Asia and Europe, and the 



260 WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

apostles were unable personally to instruct those 
who were preaching the gospel in other lands. 
Thus the need of a written record began to make 
itself felt ; and the apostles themselves wrote out 
the story which they had been telling, or it was 
written for them by their companions and fellow- 
helpers in the gospel.) The oral gospel as it lived 
in their memories would form, no doubt, the sub- 
stance of it, and the written memoranda of the 
discourses and incidents, to which Luke refers, 
would be drawn upon in completing the biogra- 
phy. The oral gospel thus carefully prepared 
and transmitted by memory would be substan- 
tially the same, yet many differences in arrange- 
ment of words and phrases would naturally have 
crept in ; the written memoranda would in many 
cases be verbally identical. And each Evangel- 
ist, gleaning from this wide field, would collect 
some facts and sayings omitted by the others. 

There are other explanations of the origin of 
the Synoptic Gospels, some of which are inge- 
nious and plausible, but I shall not burden your 
minds with them, since the theory which I have 
presented appears to me the simplest, the most 
natural, and the most comprehensive of them all. 

The Fourth Gospel, it is evident, must have 
had a different origin. Beyond question it is 
a consecutive narrative, composed by a single 
writer, and not, like the Synoptics, a compilation 
of memoranda, oral or written. It appears to be, 
in part at least, a supplementary narrative, omit- 



THE ORIGIN OF THE GOSPELS. 26 1 

ting much that is contained in the other Gospels, 
supplying some omissions, and correcting, pos- 
sibly, certain unimportant errors. Mr. Horton 
illustrates the supplementary work of this Evan- 
gelist by several instances. " The communion of 
the Lord's Supper," he says, "was so universally 
known and observed when he wrote that he ac- 
tually does not mention its institution, but he 
records a wonderful discourse concerning the 
Bread of Life which is an indispensable com- 
mentary on the unnamed institution, and by fill- 
ing in with great detail the circumstances of the 
last evening, he furnished a framework for the 
ordinance which is among our most precious pos- 
sessions. On the other hand, because the com- 
mon tradition was very vague in its date he gave 
precision to the event which they had recorded 
by fixing the time of its occurrence. ... In Matt, 
iv. 12 and Mark i. 14, the temptation, imme- 
diately following Christ's baptism, is immediately 
followed by the statement, ' When he heard that 
John was delivered up, he withdrew into Galilee ; 
and leaving Nazareth he came and dwelt in Ca- 
pernaum/ But this summary narrative had ex- 
cluded one of the most interesting features of the 
early ministry of Jesus. Accordingly the Fourth 
Gospel enlarges the story and emphasizes the 
marks of time. After the Baptism, according to 
this authority, Jesus ' went down to Capernaum, 
he and his mother and his brethren and his dis- 
ciples, and there they abode not many days ' 



262 WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

(ii. 12). Then he went up to the Passover at 
Jerusalem, where he had the interview with Nico- 
demus. After that he went into the country dis- 
tricts of Judea, where John was baptizing in iEnon, 
and then the writer adds, as if his eye were on 
the condensed and misleading narrative of the 
common tradition, i For John was not yet cast 
into prison.' The two great teachers, the Fore- 
runner, and the Greater-than-he, (were actually 
baptizing side by side^ and it was because Jesus 
saw his reputation overshadowing John's that 
he voluntarily withdrew into Galilee, passing 
through Samaria. So that while there had been 
two journeys to Galilee before John was impris- 
oned, and that early period of the life was full of 
unique and wonderful interest, all had been com- 
pressed and crushed into the brief statement of 
Matt. iv. 12 and Mark i. 14. In this case we seem 
to see the Evangelist deliberately loosening and 
breaking up the current history in order that he 
might insert into the cramped and lifeless frame- 
work some of the most valuable episodes of the 
Lord's life. If the fourth Evangelist had treated 
the triple narrative in the way that many of us 
have treated it, regarding it as a sin against the 
Holy Spirit to suggest that there was any incom- 
pleteness or any misleading abbreviations in it, 
we should have lost the wonderful accounts of 
the conversation with Nicodemus and with the 
woman at the well." 1 

1 Inspiration and the Bible, pp. 95-99. 



THE ORIGIN OF THE GOSPELS. 263 

If such is the relation of the Fourth Gospel to 
the Synoptics, it follows that it must have been 
the work of one who was thoroughly familiar 
with the events recorded. That the narrative 
bears evidence of having been written by an eye- 
witness is to my own mind clear. That the 
writer intends to convey the impression that he 
is the beloved disciple is also manifest. Either it 
was written by John the Apostle, or else the writer 
was a deliberate deceiver. There can be no such 
explanation of his personation of John as that 
which satisfies our minds in the case of Daniel 
and Ecclesiastes ; the book is either the work of 
John, or it is a cunning and conscienceless fraud. 
And it seems to me that any one who will read 
the book will find it impossible to believe that it 
is an imposture. If any book of the ages bears 
in itself the witness to the truth it is the Fourth 
Gospel. It shines by its own light. Any of us 
could tell the difference between the sun in the 
heavens and a brass disk suspended in the sky 
reflecting the sun's rays ; and in much the same 
way the fact is apparent that the book is not a 
counterfeit gospel. 

It is true that historical criticism has raised 
difficulties about it ; the battle of the critics has 
been raging around it for half a century ; but one 
after another of the positions taken by men like 
Strauss and Baur have been shown to be unten- 
able ; and it can truthfully be said, in the words 
of Professor Ladd, " that the vigorous and deter- 



264 WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

mined attacks upon the genuineness of the Fourth 
Gospel have greatly increased instead of impair- 
ing our confidence in the traditional view." 1 
And I am ready to go farther with the same 
brave but reverent scholar, and say, "Having 
thus grounded in historical and critical researches 
the genuineness of the Fourth Gospel, we have 
no hesitation in affirming what position it must 
take in Sacred Scripture. It is the heart of Jesus 
Christ with which we here come in contact. In- 
spiration and reflection uniting upon the choicest 
and most undoubted material of history, and fus- 
ing all the material with the holy characteristics 
of revelation, are nowhere else so apparent as in 
the Gospel of the Apostle John." 2 

Such, then, is the fourfold biography of Jesus 
the Christ preserved for us in the New Testa- 
ment. If this study has removed something of 
the mystery with which the origin of these writ- 
ings has been shrouded, it has, I trust, at the 
same time, made them appear more real and more 
human ; and it has shown the providential over- 
sight by which their artless record, many-sided, 
manifold, yet simple and clear as the daylight, has 
been preserved for us. (Of these four Gospels we 
are certainly entitled to say as much as this, that 
whatever verbal discrepancies may be detected in 
them, and however difficult it may be satisfac- 
torily to explain all the phenomena of their struc- 

1 What is the Bible ? p, 327. 

2 Doctrine of Sacred Scripture, i. 573. 



THE ORIGIN OF THE GOSPELS. 265 

ture and relations, in one thing they marvelously 
agree, and that is in the picture which they give 
us of the life and character of Jesus Christ In 
this each one of them is self-consistent, and they 
are all consistent with one another. And this, if 
we will reflect upon it, is a marvelous, not to say 
a miraculous fact. That four such men as these 
Evangelists incontestably were should have suc- 
ceeded in giving us four portraitures of the Divine 
Man, without contradicting themselves, and with- 
out contradicting one another, — four distinct 
views of this wonderful Person, which show us 
different sides of his character, and which we yet 
instantly recognize as the same person, is a very 
great wonder. No such task was ever laid on 
any other human biographer as that which con- 
fronted these men ; no character so difficult to 
comprehend and describe ever existed; for one 
man to preserve all the unities of art in describ- 
ing him would be notable ; for four men to give 
us, independently, four narratives, from the sim- 
ple pages of which the same lineaments shine 
out, so that no one ever thinks of saying that the 
Jesus of Matthew is a different person from the 
Jesus of Mark or Luke or John, — this, I say, is 
marvelous. 

(And it is this character, majestic in its sim- 
plicity, glorious in its humility, the Ideal of Hu- 
manity, the Mystery of Godliness, that these Gos- 
pels are meant to show us. If they only bring 
him clearly before us, make his personality real 



266 WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

and familiar and vivid before our eyes, so that we 
may know him and love him, that is all we want 
of them. Infallibility in details would be worth- 
less if this were wanting ; any small discrepancies 
are beneath notice if this is here. And this is 
here. Read for yourselves. From the page of 
Matthew, illuminated with the words of pro- 
phecy that tell of the Messiah's coming ; from 
the vivid and rapid record of Mark, in which the 
Wonder-worker displays his power ; from the 
tender story of Luke, speaking the word of grace 
to those that are lowest down and farthest off ; 
from the mystical Gospel of the beloved disciple 
opening to us the deep things that only love can 
see, the same divine form appears, the same 
divine face shines, the same divine voice is speak- 
ing. Behold the man ! ) 



CHAPTER X. 

NEW TESTAMENT HISTORY AND PROPHECY. 

The Acts of the Apostles contains the history 
of the Christian church from the time of the 
ascension of our Lord to the end of the second 
year of Paul's first imprisonment at Rome. The 
period covered by the history is therefore only 
about thirty years. The principal events re- 
corded in it are the great Pentecostal Revival, 
the Martyrdom of Stephen, the first persecution 
of the church and the dispersion of the disciples, 
the conversion and the missionary work of Paul, 
with the circumstances of his arrest at Jerusalem, 
his journey as a prisoner to Rome, and a brief 
account of his residence in that city. In the first 
part of the book Peter, the leader of the apos- 
tolic band, is the central figure ; the last part is 
occupied with the life and work of Paul. 

Who is the writer? Irenaeus, about 182, names 
Luke as the author of the book, and speaks as 
though the fact were undisputed. He calls him 
" a follower and disciple of apostles," and declares 
that " he was inseparable from Paul and was his 
fellow-helper in the gospel." This is the earliest 
distinct reference to the book in any ancient 



268 WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

Christian writing. After this, Clement of Alex- 
andria, Tertullian, Origen, and Eusebius bear the 
same testimony. But these are late witnesses. 
The earliest of them testified a hundred years 
after the death of Luke. The direct testimony to 
the existence of this book in the first two cen- 
turies is not, therefore, altogether satisfactory. 
The indirect testimony is, however, clear and 
strong. 

That the Acts was written by the author of the 
Third Gospel is scarcely doubted by any critical 
scholar. The fact of the identity of authorship is 
stated with the utmost explicitness in the intro- 
duction of the Acts. "The former treatise I 
made, O Theophilus, concerning all that Jesus 
began both to do and to teach " (Luke i. i, 2). 
The author of the Acts of the Apostles certainly 
intends to say that he is the writer of the Third 
Gospel. If he is not the author of the Third 
Gospel he is an artful and shameless deceiver. 
But the whole atmosphere of the book forbids the 
theory that it is a cunning imposition. And the 
internal evidence that the two books were written 
by the same author is ample and convincing. 
The style and the method of the treatment of the 
two books are unmistakably identical. Every 
page bears witness to the fact that the author of 
the Third Gospel and the author of the Acts are 
one and the same person. Now we know, be- 
yond all reasonable doubt, that the Gospel of 
Luke was written certainly as early as the year 



NEW TESTAMENT HISTORY. 269 

80 A. d. And there is as good reason, as we 
have seen already, for accepting the ancient and 
universal tradition of the church that Luke was 
its author. If Luke wrote the two books, the 
date of both of them is carried back to the last 
part of the first century. But the concluding 
portion of the Acts of the Apostles seems to fix 
the date of that book much more precisely. The 
author, after narrating Paul's journey to Rome, 
his arrival there, and his first unsatisfactory in- 
terview with the Jewish leaders, closes his book 
with this compendious statement : — 

" And he abode two whole years in his own 
hired dwelling, and received all that went in unto 
him, preaching the kingdom of God, and teaching 
all things concerning the Lord Jesus Christ with 
all boldness, none forbidding him." 

This is the last word in the New Testament 
history respecting the Apostle Paul. Now it is 
evident that this writer was Paul's friend and 
traveling companion. It is true that he keeps 
himself out of sight in the history. We only 
know when he joined Paul by the fact that the 
narrative changes from the third person singular 
to the first person plural ; he ceases to say "he," 
and begins to say "we." Thus we are made 
aware that he joined Paul at Troas on his second 
missionary journey, and went with him as far as 
Philippi; rejoined him at the same place on his 
third missionary tour, and accompanied him to 
Jerusalem ; was his fellow-voyager on that mem- 



27O WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

orable journey to Rome, and there abode with 
him for two years. The Epistle to the Colossians 
and the Epistle to Philemon were written during 
this imprisonment at Rome, and in both of these 
Epistles Paul speaks of the fact that Luke is near 
him. In the second letter to Timothy, which is 
supposed to have been written during the second 
imprisonment at Rome, and near the close of his 
life, he says again, " Only Luke is with me. Take 
Mark, and bring him unto me, for he is useful 
to me for ministering/' If the common opinion 
concerning the date of this letter is correct, then 
Luke must have remained with Paul at Rome 
until the close of his life. But the narrative in 
Luke does not give any account of the closing 
years of Paul's life. It breaks off abruptly at 
the end of his two years' residence in Rome. 
Why is this ? Evidently because there is no 
more to tell at this time. The writer continues 
the history up to the date of his writing and stops 
there. If he had been writing after the death of 
Paul, he would certainly have told us of the cir- 
cumstances of his death There is no rational 
explanation of this abrupt ending, except that the 
book was written at about the time when the 
story closes. This was certainly about 63 a. d. 
And if the Book of Acts was written as early as 
this, the Gospel of Luke, the " former treatise " 
by the same author, must have been written 
earlier than this. Thus the Book of Acts not 
only furnishes strong evidence of its own early 



NEW TESTAMENT HISTORY. 2J\ 

date, but helps to establish the early date of the 
third Gospel. 

These conclusions, to my own mind, are irre- 
sistible. No theory which consists with the com- 
mon honesty of the writer can bring these books 
down to a later date. And I cannot doubt the 
honesty of the writer. His writings prove him to 
be a careful, painstaking, veracious historian. In 
many slight matters this accuracy appears. The 
political structure of the Roman Empire at this 
time was somewhat complicated. The provinces 
were divided between the Emperor and the Sen- 
ate ; those heads of provinces who were directly 
responsible to the Emperor and the military au- 
thorities were called propraetors ; those who were 
under the jurisdiction of the Senate were called 
proconsuls. In mentioning these officers Luke 
never makes a mistake ; he gets the precise title 
every time. Once, indeed, the critics thought 
they had caught him in an error. Sergius Paulus, 
the Roman ruler of Cyprus, he calls proconsul. 
" Wrong ! " said the critics, " Cyprus was an im- 
perial province ; the title of this officer must have 
been propraetor." But when the critics studied a 
little more, they found out that Augustus put this 
province back under the Senate, so that Luke's 
title is exactly right. And to clinch the matter, 
old coins of this very date have been found in 
Cyprus, giving to the chief magistrate of the 
island the title of proconsul. Such evidences of 
the accuracy of the writer are not wanting. It is 



272 WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

needless to insist that he never makes a mistake ; 
doubtless he does, in some small matters,/and we 
have learned to take such a view of the inspira- 
tion of the Scriptures that the discovery of some 
small error does not trouble us in the least ; but 
the admission that he is not infallible is perfectly 
consistent with the belief that he is an honest, 
competent, faithful witness. This is all that he 
claims for himself, this is all that we claim for 
him, but this we do claim. We do not believe 
that he was a conscienceless impostor. We do 
not believe that the man who told the story of 
Ananias and Sapphira was himself a monumental 
liar. We believe that he meant to tell the truth, 
and the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. 
Therefore, we believe that he lived in the times 
of the apostles, and received from them, as he 
says that he did, the facts that he recorded in his 
Gospel ; that he was the traveling companion and 
missionary helper of Paul, as he intimates that he 
was, and that he has given us a true account of 
the life and work of that great apostle. 

The constant and undesigned coincidences be- 
tween the Acts of the Apostles and the Epistles 
of Paul — the many ways in which the personal 
and historical references of the latter support the 
statements of the former — are also strong evi- 
dence of the genuineness of the Acts. Putting 
all these indirect and incidental proofs together 
the historical verity of the Acts seems to me very 
firmly established. That there are critical dif- 



NEW TESTAMENT HISTORY. 273 

Acuities may be admitted ; some passages of this 
ancient writing are not easily explained ; there 
are discrepancies, for example, between the story 
of the resurrection and ascension of Christ as 
told in Luke and the same story as related in 
the Acts ; possibly the writer obtained fuller in- 
formation in the interval between the publication 
of these two books by which he corrected the 
earlier narrative. In the different accounts of 
the conversion of Paul there are also disagree- 
ments which we cannot reconcile ; nevertheless, 
in the words of Dr. Donaldson, " Even these very 
accounts contain evidence in them that they were 
written by the same writer, and they do not de- 
stroy the force of the rest of the evidence." 1 

The theory of Baur that this book was written 
in the last part of the second century by a dis- 
ciple of St. Paul, and that it is mainly a work of 
fiction, intended to bring about a reconciliation 
between two bitterly hostile parties in the church, 
the Pauline and the Petrine sects, need not de- 
tain us long. Baur contends that the church in 
the first two centuries was split in twain, the fol- 
lowers of Peter insisting that no man could be- 
come a Christian without first becoming a Jew, 
the followers of Paul maintaining that the Jewish 
ritual was abolished, and that the Gentiles ought 
to have immediate access to the Christian fellow- 
ship. Their antagonism was so radical and far- 
reaching that at the end of the apostolic age the 
1 Encyc. Brit % \. 124. 



274 WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

two parties had no dealings with each other. 
"Then," in the words of Professor Fisher, who is 
here summarizing the theory of Baur, "followed 
attempts to reconcile the difference, and to bridge 
the gulf that separated Gentile from Jewish, Paul- 
ine from Petrine Christianity. To this end va- 
rious irenical and compromising books were writ- 
ten in the name of the apostles and their helpers. 
The most important monument of this pacifying 
effort is the Book of Acts, written in the earlier 
part of the second century by a Pauline Christian 
who, by making Paul something of a Judaizer, 
and then representing Peter as agreeing with him 
in the recognition of the rights of the Gentiles, 
hoped, not in vain, to produce a mutual friendli- 
ness between the respective partisans of the rival 
apostles. The Acts is a fiction founded on facts, 
and written for a specific doctrinal purpose. The 
narrative of the council or conference of the 
Apostles, for example (Acts xx.), is pronounced a 
pure invention of the writer, and such a represen- 
tation of the condition of things as is inconsistent 
with Paul's own statements, and for this and 
other reasons plainly false. The same ground is 
taken in respect to the conversion of Cornelius, 
and the vision of Peter concerning it" 1 

For this theory there is, of course, some slight 
historical basis. It is true, as we have seen, that 
Peter and Paul did have a sharp disagreement on 
this very question at Antioch. It is also true 

1 The Supernatural Origin of Christianity ', pp. 211, 212. 



NEW TESTAMENT HISTORY, 275 

that both these great apostles behaved quite in- 
consistently, Peter at Antioch, and Paul after- 
wards at Jerusalem, when he consented to the 
propositions of the Judaizers, and burdened him- 
self with certain Jewish observances in a vain at- 
tempt to conciliate some of the weaker brethren. 
That the story of the Acts unflinchingly shows 
us the weaknesses and errors of the great apos- 
tles is good evidence of its veracity. But the no- 
tion that it is a work of fiction fabricated for such 
purposes as are outlined above is utterly incred- 
ible. Those Epistles of Paul which Baur admits 
to be genuine contain abundant disproof of his 
theory. There never was any such schism as he 
fancies. Paul spends a good part of his time in 
his last missionary journey in collecting funds 
for the relief of those poor " saints," for so he 
calls them, at Jerusalem ; and every reference 
that he makes to them is of the most affectionate 
character. Paul recognizes in the most emphatic 
way the authority of the other apostles, and the 
fellowship of labor and suffering by which he is 
united to them. All this and much more of the 
same import we find in those epistles which Baur 
admits to be the genuine writings of Paul. In 
short, it may be said that after the thorough dis- 
cussion to which his theory has been subjected 
for the last twenty-five years, it has scarcely a 
sound leg left to stand on. It may be admitted 
to be one of the most brilliant works of the his- 
torical imagination which the century has pro- 



276 WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

duced. It is supported by vast learning, and it 
has thrown much light on certain movements of 
the early church ; but, taken as a whole it is un- 
scientific and contradictory ; it raises two diffi- 
culties, where it disposes of one, and it ignores 
more facts than it includes. 

We return from this excursion through the 
fields of destructive criticism with a strong con- 
viction that this narrative of the Acts of the 
Apostles was written by Luke the Evangelist, 
the companion and fellow-worker of Paul, and 
that it gives us a veracious history of the earliest 
years of the Christian church. 

The last of the New Testament books does not 
belong chronologically at the end of the collec- 
tion. There was a tradition, to which Irenaeus 
gives currency, that it was written during the 
reign of Domitian, about 97 or 98 a. d. But this 
tradition is now almost universally discredited. 
Critics of all classes date the book as early as 
75-79 a. d., while the best authorities put it 
nearly ten years earlier, in the autumn of 68 or 
the spring of 69. As Archdeacon Farrar sug- 
gests, it would be vastly better if these books of 
the New Testament were arranged in true chro- 
nological order ; they could be more easily un- 
derstood. The fact that this weird production 
stands at the end of the collection has made upon 
many minds a wrong impression as to its mean- 
ing, and has given it a kind of significance to 
which it is not entitled. 



NEW TESTAMENT HISTORY. 2JJ 

The authorship of the book is quite generally 
ascribed to John the son of Zebedee, brother of 
James, and one of the apostles of our Lord. 
Even the destructive critics agree to this ; some 
among them say that there is less doubt about the 
date and the authorship of this book than about 
almost any other New Testament writing. In 
making this concession they intend, however, to 
discredit the Johannine authorship of the Fourth 
Gospel. The more certain we are that John 
wrote the Revelation, they argue, the more cer- 
tain are we that he did not write the Gospel 
which bears his name ; for the style of the two 
writings is so glaringly contrasted that it is sim- 
ply impossible that both could have come from 
the same writer. This does not seem nearly so 
clear to me as it does to some of these learned 
and perspicacious critics. A great contrast there 
is, indeed, between the style of the Revelation 
and that of the Gospel ; but this contrast may be 
explained. It is said, in the first place, that the 
Greek of the Apocalypse is very bad Greek, full 
of ungrammatical sentences, abounding in He- 
braisms, while that of the Gospel is good Greek, 
accurate and rhetorical in its structure. But this 
is by no means an unaccountable phenomenon. 
The first book was written by the apostle very 
soon, probably, after his removal to Ephesus. 
He had never, I suppose, been accustomed to use 
the Greek familiarly in his own country ; had 
never written in it at all, and it is not strange 



278 WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

that he should express himself awkwardly when 
he first began to write Greek ; that the Aramaic 
idioms should constantly reproduce themselves in 
his Greek sentences. After he had been living 
for twenty-five years in the cultivated Greek city 
of Ephesus, using the Greek language continu- 
ally, it is probable that he would write it more 
elegantly. 

But it is said that the rhetorical style of the 
one book differs radically from that of the other. 
Doubtless. The one book is an apocalypse, the 
other is a biography. John may not have been 
a practiced litterateur, but he certainly had liter- 
ary sense and feeling enough to know how to put 
a very different color and atmosphere into an 
apocalyptical writing from that which he would 
employ in a report of the life and words of Jesus. 
Without any reflection, indeed, he would instinc- 
tively use the apocalyptic imagery ; his pages 
would flare and resound with the lurid symbolism 
peculiar to the apocalypses. How definite a type 
of literature this was we shall presently see ; no 
writer, while using it, would clearly manifest his 
own personality. And if through all this dis- 
guise we do discern symptoms of a temper more 
fervid and a spirit more Judaic than that which 
finds expression in the Fourth Gospel, let us re- 
member that the ripened wisdom of the old man 
speaks in the latter, and the intense enthusiasm 
of conscious strength in the former. This John, 
let us not forget, was not in his youth a paragon 



NEW TESTAMENT HISTORY. 279 

of mildness ; it was he and his brother James 
who earned the sobriquet of Boanerges, " Sons 
of thunder ; " it was they who wanted to call 
down fire from heaven to consume an inhospitable 
Samaritan village. Moreover, we shall see as we 
go on that the times in which this apocalypse 
was written were times in which the mildest- 
mannered men would be apt to forget their deco- 
rum, and speak with unwonted intensity. A 
man with any blood in him, who undertook to 
write in the year 68 of the themes with which the 
soul of this apostle was then on fire, would be 
likely to show, no matter in what vehicle of 
speech his thought might be conveyed, some 
sign of the tumult then raging within him. 

All these circumstances, taken together, en- 
able me to explain the difference between the lit- 
erary form of the Revelation and that of the Gos- 
pel. But when we come to look a little more 
deeply into the meaning of the two books, we 
shall find that beneath all this dissimilarity there 
are some remarkable points of agreement. Quite 
a number of the leading ideas and conceptions of 
the one book reappear in the other ; the idea of 
Christ as the Word or Logos of God, the rep- 
resentation of Christ as the Lamb, as the Good 
Shepherd, as the Light, are peculiar to John ; 
we find them emphasized in the Gospel and in 
the Revelation. The unity of the two books in 
fundamental conceptions has been admirably 
brought out by Dr. Sears, in his volume entitled 



280 WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

" The Heart of Christ." And after weighing the 
evidence, I find neither historical nor psychologi- 
cal reasons sufficient to overthrow my belief that 
the Fourth Gospel, as well as the Revelation, was 
written by John the Apostle. 

The Greek name of the book means an uncov- 
ering or unveiling, and is fairly interpreted, there- 
fore, by our word Revelation. It belongs to a 
class of books which were produced in great num- 
bers during the two centuries preceding the birth 
of Christ and the two centuries following ; and 
no one can understand it or interpret it who 
does not know something of this species of litera- 
ture, of the forms of expression peculiar to it, and 
of the purposes which it was intended to serve. 
, We have in the Old Testament one Apocalyp- 
tic book, that of Daniel, and there are apocalyp- 
tical elements in two or three of the prophecies. 
The fact that the Book of Daniel bears this char- 
acter is a strong argument for the lateness of its 
origin ; for it was in the last years of the Jewish 
nationality that this kind of writing became pop- 
ular. We have six or seven books of this kind, 
which are written mainly from the standpoint of 
the old dispensation, part of which appeared just 
before and part shortly after the beginning of our 
era; and there are nearly a dozen volumes of 
Christian apocalypses, all of which employ similar 
forms of expression, and are directed towards sim- 
ilar ends. Doubtless these are only a few of the 
great number of apocalyptical books which those 



NEW TESTAMENT HISTORY. . 28 1 

ages produced. Their characteristics are well 
set forth by Dr. Davidson : — 

"This branch of later Jewish literature took 
its rise after the older prophecy had ceased, when 
Israel suffered sorely from Syrian and Roman 
oppression. Its object was to encourage and 
comfort the people by holding forth the speedy 
restoration of the Davidic Kingdom of Messiah. 
Attaching itself to the national hope, it pro- 
claimed the impending of a glorious future, in 
which Israel freed from her enemies should enjoy 
a peaceful and prosperous life under her long- 
wished-for deliverer. The old prophets became 
the vehicle of these utterances. Revelations, 
sketching the history of Israel and of heathenism, 
are put into their mouths. The prophecies take 
the form of symbolical images and marvelous 
visions. . . . Working in this fashion upon the 
basis of well-known writings, imitating their 
style, and artificially reproducing their substance, 
the authors naturally adopted the anonymous. 
The difficulty was increased by their having to 
paint as future, events actually near, and to fit 
the manifestation of a personal Messiah into the 
history of the times. Many apocalyptists em- 
ployed obscure symbols and mysterious pictures, 
veiling the meaning that it might not be readily 
seen." * 

" Every time," says Dr. Harnack, " the political 
situation culminated in a crisis for the people of 

1 Encyc. Brit., i. 174. 



282 WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

God, the apocalypses appeared stirring up the be- 
lievers ; in spirit, form, plan, and execution they 
closely resembled each other. . . . They all spoke 
in riddles ; that is, by means of images, sym- 
bols, mystic numbers, forms of animals, etc., they 
half concealed what they meant to reveal. The 
reasons for this procedure are not far to seek : 
(i.) Clearness and distinctness would have been 
too profane ; only the mysterious appears divine. 
(2.) It was often dangerous to be too distinct." 1 

That these writings appeared in troublous times, 
and that they dealt with affairs of the present and 
of the immediate future, must always be borne in 
mind. Certain symbolical conceptions are com- 
mon to them ; earthquakes denote revolutions ; 
stars falling from heaven typify the downfall of 
kings and dynasties ; a beast is often the emblem 
of a tyrant ; the turning of the sun into darkness 
and the moon into blood signify carnage and de- 
struction upon the earth. We have these sym- 
bolisms in several of the Old Testament writings 
as well as in many of the apocalyptical books 
which are not in our canon ; and the interpreta- 
tion of such passages is not at all difficult when 
we understand the usage of the writers. 

Of these apocalyptic books one of the most 
remarkable is the Book of Enoch, which appears 
to have been written a century or two before 
Christ. It purports to be a revelation made to 
and through the patriarch Enoch ; it contains an 

1 Encyc. Brit, xx. 496. 



NEW TESTAMENT HISTORY. 283 

account of the fall of the angels, and of a progeny 
of giants that sprung from the union of these 
exiled celestials with the daughters of men ; it 
takes Enoch on a tour of observation through 
heaven and earth under the guidance of angels, 
who explain to him many things supernal and 
mundane ; it deals in astronomical and meteoro- 
logical mysteries of various sorts, and in a series 
of symbolical visions seeks to disclose the events 
of the future. It is a grotesque production ; one 
does not find much spiritual nutriment in it, but 
Jucfe makes a quotation from it, in his epistle, as 
if he considered it Holy Scripture. 

" The Fourth Book of Esdras " is another Jew- 
ish book of the same kind, which may have been 
written about the hundredth year of our era. It 
purports to be the work of Ezra, whom it mis- 
places, chronologically, putting him in the thirtieth 
year of the Captivity. The problem of the writer 
is the restoration of the nation, destroyed and 
scattered by the Roman power. He makes the 
ancient scribe and law-giver of Israel his mouth- 
piece, but he is dealing with the events of his 
own time. Nevertheless, his allusions are veiled 
and obscure ; he speaks in riddles, yet he speaks 
to a people who understand his riddles, and know 
how to take his symbolic visions. This book is 
in our English Apocrypha, under the title 2 Es- 
dras. 

" The Book of Jubilees," which assumes to 
be a revelation made to Moses on Mount Sinai, 



284 WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

"The Ascension of Moses," "The Apocalypse of 
Moses," and the "Apocalypse of Baruch," are 
other similar books of the Jewish literature. 

Of apocalyptical Christian writings, I may men- 
tion "The Sibylline Books," "The Apocalypse of 
Paul," "The Apocalypse of Peter," "The Rev- 
elation of Bartholomew," and " The Ascension of 
Isaiah," and there is also another " Apocalypse 
of John," a feeble imitation of the one with which 
our canon closes. These books appeared in the 
second, third, and fourth centuries of our era ; 
they generally look forward to the second com- 
ing of Christ, and set forth in various figures and 
symbols the conflicts and persecutions which his 
saints must encounter, the destruction of his foes, 
and the establishment of his kingdom. 

It will be seen, therefore, that the Revelation 
of St. John is not unique ; and the inference will 
not be rash that much light may be thrown upon 
its dark sayings by a careful study of kindred 
books. 

It may be answered that the writer of this book 
is inspired, and that nothing can be learned of 
the meaning of an inspired book by studying un- 
inspired books. I reply that no inspired book 
can be understood at all without a careful study 
of uninspired books. The Greek grammar and 
the Greek lexicon are uninspired books, and no 
man can understand a single one of the books of 
the New Testament without carefully studying 
both of them, or else availing himself of the labor 



NEW TESTAMENT HISTORY, 285 

of some one else who has diligently studied them. 
An inspired writer uses language, — the same lan- 
guage that uninspired writers use ; the meaning 
of language is fixed not by inspiration, but by 
usage ; you must study the grammar and the 
lexicon to learn about the usage. And the case 
is precisely similar when an inspired writer uses 
a peculiar form of literature like the apocalyptical 
writings. He knows when he uses symbolisms of 
this class that they will be interpreted according 
to the common usage ; he expects and desires 
that they shall be so understood ; and, therefore, 
in order to understand them, we must know what 
the usage is. 

When our Lord, speaking of the calamities 
which were about to fall upon the Jewish people, 
said, " Immediately after the tribulation of those 
days, the sun shall be darkened, and the moon 
shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall 
from heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall 
be shaken," he was speaking to people who were 
perfectly familiar with language of this sort, be- 
cause the same expressions occur over and over 
again in their prophets, and are there distinctly 
declared to mean great political overturnings. 
He used the apocalyptic phraseology, and he ex- 
pected them to give it the apocalyptic significa- 
tion. If we wish to understand the Scripture, 
we must understand the language of Scripture, 
and this means not only the grammatical forms, 
but also the symbolic usages of the language. 



286 WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

We have seen that the apocalypses are apt to 
appear in times of great calamity, and we have 
accepted the verdict of later scholarship, that this 
Apocalypse of St. John appeared about 68 or 69 
A. d. Was this a time of trouble in that Eastern 
world ? Verily it was ; the most appalling hour 
perhaps in the world's history. The unspeakable 
Nero was either still upon the throne of the Ro- 
man Empire, or had just reeled from that em- 
inence to the doom of a craven suicide. The last 
years of his life were gorged with horror. The 
murder of his brother, the burning of Rome, 
probably by his connivance, if not by his com- 
mand, in order that he might sate his appetite 
for sensations upon this horrid spectacle ; follow- 
ing this the fiendish scheme to charge this in- 
cendiarism upon the Christians, and slaughter 
them by tens of thousands in all the cities of the 
Empire, — these are only instances of a career 
which words are too feeble to portray. Those 
who succeeded him in this supreme power were 
not much less ferocious ; the very name of pity 
seemed to have been blotted from the Roman 
speech ; the whole Empire reeked with cruelty 
and perfidy. While such men ruled at Rome it 
could not be supposed that the imperial represen- 
tatives in the provinces would be temperate and 
just. Some of them, at any rate, had learned the 
lesson of the hour, and were as perfidious, as 
truculent, as base as their master could have 
wished. Such a one was that Gessius Florus 



NEW TESTAMENT HISTORY. 287 

who was the procurator of Judea, and who seemed 
to have exhausted the ingenuity of a malignant 
nature in stirring up the Jews to insurrection. 
By every species of indignity and cruelty he 
finally stung the long-suffering people into a per- 
fect fury, and the rebellion which broke out in 
Palestine in the year 66 was one of the most fear- 
ful eruptions of human nature that the world has 
ever seen. Florus had raised the demon ; now 
the legions of Rome must be called in to exor- 
cise it. It was a terrible struggle. All the ener- 
gies of Jewish fanaticisms were enlisted ; the Zeal- 
ots, the fiercest party among them, not content 
with slaughtering their Roman enemies, turned 
their hands against every man of their own nation 
who ventured to question the wisdom of their des- 
perate resistance. In Jerusalem itself a reign of 
terror raged which makes the French Revolution 
seem in comparison a calm and orderly procedure. 
At the beginning of the outbreak Nero had 
sent one of his trusted generals, Vespasian, and 
Vespasian's son Titus, to put down the insurrec- 
tion. Neither of these soldiers was a sentimen- 
talist ; both believed as heartily as did Went- 
worth in later years that the word of the hour 
was Thorough. They started with their armies 
from Antioch in March, 67, resolved on sweeping 
Palestine with the besom of destruction. Cities 
and villages, one by one, were besieged, captured, 
destroyed ; men, women, and children were indis- 
criminately massacred. The Jewish army fought 



288 WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

every inch of the ground like tigers ; but they 
were overpowered and beaten in detail, and 
steadily forced southward. Blackened walls, pools 
of blood, and putrefying corpses were all that the 
Romans left in their rear ; ruthlessly they drove 
the doomed people before them toward their 
stronghold of Jerusalem. In the autumn of that 
year Vespasian withdrew his army into winter- 
quarters, and left the Zealots in Jerusalem to 
their orgy of brigandage and butchery. He could 
well afford to rest and let them do his deadly 
work. 

In the spring of the following year, the siege 
of Jerusalem began. The Christians of the city 
had fled to Pella, east of the Jordan ; the remnant 
of the Jews held their sacred heights with the 
courage of despair. 

It is at this very juncture that this book of the 
Revelation was written. John testifies that it 
was written on Patmos, a desolate islet of the 
^Egean Sea, west of Asia Minor, to which he had 
either been banished by some tool of Nero, or 
else had betaken himself for solitude and reflec- 
tion. To him, in this retreat, the awful tidings 
had come of the scourge that had fallen on the 
land of his fathers ; added to this, the conflagra- 
tion at Rome, the Neronian persecution, all the 
horrors of the past decade were fresh in his 
memory. May we not say that the time was ripe 
for an apocalyptic message ? 

It is in these events, then, that we must find 



NEW TESTAMENT HISTORY. 289 

the explanation of much of this symbolical lan- 
guage. Such is the law of the apocalypse, and 
this apocalypse may be expected to conform to 
the law. St. John is instructed by the angel to 
write " the things which thou sawest, and the 
things which are, and the things which shall 
come to pass hereafter," — "the things which 
must shortly come to pass," the first verse more ex- 
plicitly states. It is the past which he has seen, 
the present, and the immediate future with which 
his visions are concerned. It is not any attempt 
to outline the whole course of human history ; it 
is the picture, in mystic symbols, of the present 
crisis and of the deliverance which is to follow it. 

There is no room here for a commentary on 
the Apocalypse ; I will only indicate, in a rapid 
glance, the outline of the book. 

The first three chapters are occupied with the 
epistles to the seven churches which are in Asia, 
administering reproof, exhortation, comfort, and 
counsel to the Christians in these churches, — 
faithful, stirring, persuasive appeals, whose mean- 
ing can be easily understood, and whose truth is 
often sorely needed by the churches of our own 
time. 

Then begins the proper Apocalypse, with the 
first vision of the throne in heaven, and sitting 
thereon the Lamb that was slain, who is also the 
Lion of the tribe of Judah. The book sealed 
with seven seals is given to him to open, and the 
opening of each seal discloses a new vision. The 



29O WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

first seal opened shows a white horse bearing a 
rider who carries a bow and wears a crown, and 
who goes forth conquering and to conquer. This 
is the emblem of the Messiah whose conquest of 
the world is represented as beginning. But the 
Messiah once said, " I came not to bring peace, 
but a sword," and the consequences of his com- 
ing must often be strife and sorrow because of 
the malignity of men. And therefore the three 
seals which are opened next disclose a fiery horse, 
the symbol of War, a black horse, whose rider is 
Famine, a pale horse in whose saddle is Death. 
The opening of the fifth seal shows the martyred 
multitude before the throne of God. The sixth 
discloses the desolation and the ruin taking place 
upon the earth. Thus the mighty panorama 
passes constantly before our eyes ; the confusion, 
the devastation, the woes, the scourges of man- 
kind through which Messiah's Kingdom is ad- 
vancing to its triumph. The seals, the trumpets, 
the vials bring before us representations of the 
retributions and calamities which are falling upon 
mankind. Sometimes we seem to be able to fix 
upon a historical event which the vision clearly 
symbolizes ; sometimes the meaning to us is 
vague ; perhaps if we had lived in that day the 
allusion would have been more intelligible. 

There is, however, one great central group of 
these visions round about which the others seem 
to be arrayed as scenic accessories, whose inter- 
pretation the writer has taken great pains to in- 



NEW TESTAMENT HISTORY. 29 1 

dicate. These are the visions found in chapters 
xii., xiii., xvi., and xvii. The woman, sun-clad, with 
the moon under her feet and a crown of twelve 
stars upon her head (chap, xii.), is beyond all 
question the ancient Jewish church ; the child 
which is born to the woman is the Christian 
church ; the great red dragon that seeks to de- 
vour the child is the Satanic power, the Prince 
of this world. The Dragon is here on the earth 
because he has been expelled from heaven. The 
war of the Dragon against the woman indicates 
the persecutions of the church ; the flight of the 
woman to the wilderness may symbolize the re- 
cent escape of the mother church from Jerusa- 
lem to Pella. 

The next vision shows a Beast, coming up out 
of the sea, with seven heads and ten horns, and 
on his horns ten diadems, and on his heads names 
of blasphemy. Here we have an instance of that 
confounding of symbols, the merging of one in 
another, which is very common in the apocalyptic 
writings. The beast is, primarily, Nero, or the 
Roman Empire, as represented by Nero. The 
ten horns are the ten chief provinces ; the seven 
heads are seven emperors. " It is a symbol,'' 
says Dr. Farrar, "interchangeably of the Roman 
Empire and of the Emperor. In fact, to a greater 
degree than at any period of history, the two 
were one. Roman history had dwindled down 
into a personal drama. The Roman Emperor 
could say with literal truth, ' UEtat c est moi. y 



292 WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

And a wild beast was a Jew's natural symbol 
either for a Pagan Kingdom or for its autocrat." 1 
I can do no better than to repeat to you a small 
part of Dr. Farrar's further comment upon this 
vision. 

"This wild beast of Heathen Rome has ten 
horns, which represent the ten main provinces of 
Imperial Rome. It has the power of the Dragon, 
that is, it possesses the Satanic dominion of the 
' Prince of the power of the air/ 

" On each of its heads is the name of blasphemy. 
Every one of the seven Kings, however counted, 
had borne the (to Jewish ears) blasphemous sur- 
name of Augustus (Sebastos, one to be adored) ; 
had received apotheosis, and been spoken of as 
Divine after his death ; had been crowned with 
statues, adorned with divine attributes, had been 
saluted with divine titles, and, in some instances, 
had been absolutely worshiped, and that in his 
lifetime. . . . 

" The diadems are on the horns, because the 
Roman Proconsuls, as delegates of the Emperor, 
enjoy no little share of the Caesarean autocracy 
and splendor, but the name of blasphemy is only 
on the heads, because the Emperor alone receives 
divine honors and alone bears the daring title of 
Augustus." 2 

One of the heads of this Beast was wounded to 
death, but the deadly wound was healed. It was 

1 The Early Days of Christianity, p. 463. 

2 Ibid., p. 464. 



NEW TESTAMENT HISTORY. 293 

the universal belief among Pagans and Christians 
that the world had not yet seen the last of Nero. 
Either his suicide was feigned and ineffectual, 
and he was in hiding, or else he would come to 
life and resume his savage splendors and his 
gilded villainies. To make it certain that the 
writer here refers to this expectation, we find, in 
chapter xvii., another reference to the Beast, 
which seems at first a riddle, but which is easily 
interpreted. " The five are fallen, the one is, the 
other is not yet come"; "The Beast that thou 
sawest was and is not, and is about to come out 
of the abyss." " The Beast that was and is not, 
even he is an eighth, and is of the seven." The 
head and the Beast are here identified. The 
meaning is that five Roman Emperors are dead, 
Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, Nero ; 
" one is," — Galba is now reigning ; " the other " 
(Otho) "is not yet come;" but he must come 
soon for Galba is an old man and cannot long 
survive, and "the Beast that was and is not," — 
Nero, — who is " about to come out of the abyss," 
— to return to life, — " even he is an eighth, and 
is of the seven." He is one of the seven, for he 
was the fifth, and he will be the eighth. It was 
the universal Christian belief that Nero, raised 
from the dead, would be the future Antichrist, 
and it is this belief which the vision reflects. To 
make the case still clearer the writer gives us, by 
the current Hebrew Kabbalistic method, the num- 
ber of the Beast, that is to say, the numerical value 



294 WH0 WROTE THE BIBLE? 

of his name. Each letter of the old alphabets 
has a numerical value. Thus the writer of the 
Sibyllines points out the Greek name of Jesus 
— Irja-ovs, — by saying that its whole number is 
equivalent to eight units, eight tens, and eight 
hundreds. This is the exact numerical value of 
the six Greek letters composing the Saviour's 
name, 10+8+200+70+400+200 = 888. Pre- 
cisely so John here tells us what is the numerical 
value of the letters in the name of the Beast. 
If we tried the Latin or the Greek names of Nero 
the clue would not be found ; but John was writ- 
ing mainly for Hebrews, and the Hebrew letters 
of Kesar Neron, the name by which every Jew 
knew this Emperor, amount to exactly 666. 

Many other of the features of this veiled de- 
scription tally perfectly with the character of this 
infamous ruler ; and when the evidence is all 
brought together it seems as though the apostle 
could scarcely have made his meaning more ob- 
vious if he had written Nero's name in capital 
letters. 

This is the central vision of the Apocalypse, as 
I have said ; round about this the whole cyclo- 
rama revolves ; and it has been the standing 
enigma of the interpreters in all the ages." The 
early church generally divined its meaning ; but 
in later years the high-soaring exegesis which 
has spread this Apocalypse all over the centuries 
and found in it prophetic symbols of almost all 
the events that have happened in mediaeval and 



NEW TESTAMENT HISTORY. 295 

modern history, has identified the Beast with 
countless characters, among them Genseric, King 
of the Vandals, Benedict, Trajan, Paul V., Calvin, 
Luther, Mohammed, Napoleon. All this wild 
guessing arises from ignorance of the essential 
character and purpose of the apocalyptical writ- 
ings. 

I can follow this enticing theme no further. 
Let it suffice to call the attention of all who de- 
sire to reach some sober conclusions upon the 
meaning of the book to Archdeacon Farrar's 
" Early Days of Christianity/' in which the whole 
subject is treated with the amplest learning and 
the soundest literary judgment. 

The Book of Revelation has been, as I have in- 
timated, the favorite tramping ground of all the 
hosts of theological visionaries ; men who pos- 
sessed not the slightest knowledge of the history 
or the nature of apocalyptic literature, and whose 
appetite for the mysterious and the monstrous 
was insatiable, have expatiated here with bound- 
less license. To find in these visions descrip- 
tions of events now passing and characters now 
upon the stage is a sore temptation. To use 
these hard words, the Beast, the Dragon, the 
False Prophet, as missiles wherewith to assail 
those who belong to a school or a party with 
which you are at variance, is a chance that no 
properly constituted partisan could willingly fore- 
go. Thus we have seen this book dragged into 
the controversies and applied to the events of 



296 WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

all the centuries, and the history of its interpre- 
tation is, as one of its interpreters confesses, the 
opprobrium of exegesis. But if one ceases to 
look among these symbols for a predictive out- 
line of modern history, " a sort of anticipated 
Gibbon/' and begins to read it in the light of the 
apocalyptic method, it may have rich and large 
meanings for him. He will not be able, indeed, 
to explain it all ; to some of these riddles the clue 
has been lost ; but, in the words of Dr. Farrar, 
" he will find that the Apocalypse is what it pro- 
fesses to be, — an inspired outline of contempo- 
rary history, and of the events to which the sixth 
decade of the first century gave immediate rise. 
He will read in it the tremendous manifesto of a 
Christian seer against the blood-stained triumph 
of imperial heathenism ; a paean and a prophecy 
over the ashes of the martyrs ; the thundering 
reverberations of a mighty spirit struck by the 
fierce plectrum of the Neronian persecution, and 
answering in impassioned music which, like many 
of David's Psalms, dies away into the language 
of rapturous hope/' 1 

For we must not forget that this is a song of 
triumph. This seer is no pessimist. The strife 
is hot, the carnage is fearful, they that rise up 
against our Lord and his Messiah are many and 
mighty, but there is no misgiving as to the event. 
For all these woes there is solace, after all these 
conflicts peace. Even in the midst of the raging 

1 Early Days of Christianity ', p. 429. 



NEW TESTAMENT HISTORY. 297 

wars and persecutions, the door is opened now 
and again into the upper realm of endless joy 
and unfading light. And he " whose name is 
called The Word of God/' upon whose garment 
and whose thigh the name is written, " King of 
Kings and Lord of Lords/' will prevail at last 
over all his foes. The Beast and the Dragon, 
and the False Prophet and the Scarlet Woman 
(the harlot city upon her seven hills whose mystic 
name is Babylon) will all be cast into the lake of 
fire ; then to the purified earth the New Jerusa- 
lem shall come down out of heaven from God. 
This is the emblem and the prophecy, not of the 
city beyond the stars, but of the purified society 
which shall yet exist upon the earth, — the frui- 
tion of his work who came, not to judge the 
world, but to save the world. It is on these 
plains, along these rivers, by these fair shores 
that the New Jerusalem is to stand ; it is not 
heaven; it is a city that comes down out of 
heaven from God. No statement could be more 
explicit. The glorious visions which fill the last 
chapters of this wonderful book are the promise 
of that " All hail Hereafter," for which every 
Christian patriot, every lover of mankind, is al- 
ways looking and longing and fighting and wait- 
ing. And he who, by the mouth of this seer, tes- 
tifieth the words of the prophecy of this book 
saith, " Yea, I come quickly. Even so, come, 
Lord Jesus." 



CHAPTER XI. 

THE CANON. 

We have studied with what care we were able 
the historical problem of the origin and author- 
ship of the several books of the Old and New 
Testament ; we now come to a deeply interesting 
question, — the question of the canon. 

This word, as used in this connection, means 
simply an authoritative list or catalogue. The 
canon of the Bible is the determined and official 
table of contents. The settlement of the canon 
is the process of determining what and how many 
books the Bible shall contain. In the Old Testa- 
ment are thirty-nine books, in the New Testa- 
ment twenty-seven ; and it is a fixed principle 
with Protestants that these books and no others 
constitute the Sacred Scriptures, — that no more 
can be added and none taken away. 

The popular belief respecting this matter has 
been largely founded upon the words with which 
the Book of Revelation concludes : — 

" For I testify unto every man that heareth 
the words of the prophecy of this book, If any 
man shall add unto them, God shall add unto him 
the plagues which are written in this book : and 



THE CANON. 299 

if any man shall take away from the words of the 
book of this prophecy, God shall take away his 
part from the tree of life, and out of the holy 
city, which are written in this book." 

The common notion is that the "book " here 
referred to is the Bible ; and that these sentences^ 
therefore, are the divine authorization of the pres- 
ent contents of the Bible, a solemn testimony 
from the Lord himself to the integrity of the 
canon. But this is a misapprehension. The book 
referred to is the Revelation of St. John, — not 
the Bible, not even the New Testament. When 
these words were written, says Dr. Barnes in his 
" Commentary," "the books that now constitute 
what we call the Bible were not collected into a 
single volume. (That passage, therefore, should 
not be adduced as referring to the whole of the 
Sacred Scriptures.Y In fact, when these words 
of the Revelation were written, several of the 
books of the New Testament were not yet in 
existence ; for this is by no means the last of the 
New Testament writings, though it stands at the 
end of the collection. The Gospel and the Epis- 
tles of John were added after this ; and we may 
trust that no plagues were " added " to the be- 
loved disciple for writing them. 

Nevertheless, as I said, it is assumed that the 
contents of the Bible are fixed ; that the collec- 
tion is and for a long time has been complete 
and perfect ; that it admits neither of subtrac- 
tions nor of additions ; that nothing is in the 



300 WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

book which ought not to be there, and that there 
is nothing outside of its covers which ought to 
be within them ; that the canon is settled, in- 
flexibly and infallibly and finally. 

The questions now to be considered are these : 
Who settled it ? When was it settled ? On what 
grounds was it determined ? Was any question 
ever raised concerning the sacredness or au- 
thority of any of the books now included in the 
canon ? Did any other books, not now included 
in the canon, ever claim a place in it ? If so, why 
were these rejected and those retained ? 

This is, as will be seen, a simple question of 
history. We can trace with tolerable certainty 
the steps by which this collection of sacred writ- 
ings was made ; we know pretty well who did it, 
and when and how it was done. And there is 
nothing profane or irreverent in this inquiry, for 
the work of collecting these writings and fixing 
this canon has been done mainly, if not wholly, 
by men who were not inspired and did not claim 
to be. There is nothing mysterious or miraculous 
about their doings any more than there is about 
the acts of the framers of the Westminster Con- 
fession, or the American Constitution. They 
were dealing with sacred matters, no doubt, when 
they were trying to determine what books should 
be received and used as Scriptures, but they were 
dealing with them in exactly the same way that 
we do, by using the best lights they had. 

As we have learned in previous chapters, the 



THE CANON. 3OI 

beginning of our canon was made by Ezra the 
scribe, who, in the fifth century before Christ, 
newly published and consecrated the Pentateuch, 
or Five Books of Moses, as the Holy Book of the 
Jewish people. 

After Ezra came Nehemiah, to whom the be- 
ginning of the second collection of Jewish Scrip- 
tures, called the Prophets, is ascribed in one of 
the apocryphal books. But this collection was 
not apparently finished and closed by Nehemiah. 
The histories of Joshua and Judges, of Samuel 
and Kings, and the principal books of the Pro- 
phets were undoubtedly gathered by him ; but it 
would seem that the collection was left open for 
future prophecies. 

About the same time the third group of the 
Old Testament Scriptures, " The Hagiographa," 
or " Writings/' began to be collected. No book 
of the Bible contains any information concern- 
ing the making of these two later collections, 
the Prophets and the Hagiographa ; and we are 
obliged to rely wholly upon Jewish tradition, and 
upon references which we find in Jewish writers. 
Professor Westcott, who is one of the most con- 
servative of Biblical scholars, says that " the com- 
bined evidence of tradition and of the general 
course of Jewish history leads to the conclusion 
that the canon in its present shape was formed 
gradually during a lengthened interval, beginning 
with Ezra and extending through a part, or even 
the whole of the Persian period/ ' or from b. c. 



302 WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

458 to 332. Without adopting this conclusion, 
we may remark that this last date, 332, was nearly 
a century after Nehemiah and Malachi, the last 
of the prophets ; so that if the canon was closed 
at a date so late as this, it must have been closed 
by men who were certainly not known to have 
been inspired. If it was forming, through all this 
period, then it must have been formed in part by 
men in behalf of whom no claim of inspiration 
has ever been set up. 

According to Jewish tradition the work of col- 
lecting, editing, and authorizing the sacred writ- 
ings was done by a certain " Great Synagogue," 
founded by Ezra, presided over by Nehemiah, 
after him, and continuing in existence down to 
about the year 200 b. c. This is wholly a tradi- 
tion, and has been proved to be baseless. There 
never was such a synagogue ; the Scriptures 
know nothing about it ; the apocryphal writers, 
so numerous and widely dispersed, have never 
heard of it ; Philo and Josephus are ignorant con- 
cerning it. None of the Jewish authors of the 
period who freely discuss the Scriptures and their 
authority makes mention of this Great Syna- 
gogue. The story of its existence is first heard 
from some Jewish rabbin hundreds of years after 
Christ. 

We have proof enough in the New Testament 
that the Jews had certain Sacred Scriptures ; the 
New Testament writers often quote them and refer 
to them ; but there is no conclusive proof that they 



THE CANON. 303 

had been gathered at this time into a complete 
collection. Jesus tells the Jews that they search 
the Scriptures, but he does not say how many of 
these Scriptures there were in his day ; Paul re- 
minds Timothy that from a child he had known 
the Holy Scriptures, but he gives no list of their 
titles. If we found all the books of the Old Tes- 
tament quoted or referred to by the New Testa- 
ment writers, then we should know that they pos- 
sessed the same books that we have. Most of 
these books are thus referred to ; but there are 
seven Old Testament books whose names the 
New Testament never quotes, and at least five to 
which it makes no reference whatever : Eccle- 
siastes, Song of Solomon, Esther, Ezra, and Ne- 
hemiah. To Judges, Chronicles, and Ezekiel it 
refers only in the same way that it refers to a 
number of the apocryphal books. Some of these 
omissions appear to be significant. The New 
Testament gives us therefore no definite informa- 
tion by which we can determine whether the Old 
Testament canon was closed at the time of Christ, 
nor does it tell us of what books it was composed. 
We have seen already that two different col- 
lections of Old Testament writings were in exist- 
ence, one in Hebrew, and the other a translation 
into the Greek, made by Jews in Alexandria, and 
called the Septuagint. The latter collection was 
the one most used by our Lord and the apostles ; 
much the greater number of quotations from the 
Old Testament found in the Gospels and the Epis- 



304 WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

ties are taken from the Septuagint. This Greek 
Bible contained quite a number of books which are 
not in the Hebrew Bible : they were later in their 
origin than any of the Old Testament books ; 
most of them were originally written in Greek ; 
and while they were regarded by some of the 
more conservative of the Jews in Egypt as in- 
ferior to the Law and the Prophets, they were 
generally ranked with the books of the Hagio- 
grapha as sacred writings. This is evident from 
the fact that they were mingled indiscriminately 
with these books of the older Scriptures. You 
know that I am speaking now of the apocryphal 
books which you find in some of your old Bibles, 
between the Old and New Testaments. These 
were the later books contained in the Septuagint, 
and not in the Hebrew Bible. But they were not 
sorted out by themselves in the Septuagint ; they 
were interspersed through the other books, as of 
equal value. Thus in the Vatican Bible, of which 
we shall learn more by and by, Esdras First and 
Second succeed the Chronicles ; Tobit and Judith 
are between Nehemiah and Esther ; the Wisdom 
of Solomon and Sirach follow Solomon's Song ; 
Baruch is next to Jeremiah ; Daniel is followed 
by Susanna and Bel and the Dragon, and the col- 
lection closes with the three books of Maccabees. 
All the old manuscripts of the Bible which we 
possess — those which are regarded as above all 
others sacred and authoritative — contain these 
apocryphal writings thus intermingled with the 



THE CANON. 305 

books of our own canon. It is clear, therefore, 
that to the Alexandrian Jews these later books 
were Sacred Scriptures ; and it is certain also that 
our Lord and his apostles used the collection 
which contained these books. It is said that they 
do not refer to them, and it is true that they do 
not mention them by name ; but they do use 
them occasionally. Let me read you a few pas- 
sages which will illustrate their familiarity with 
the apocryphal books. 

James i. 19: " Let every man be swift to hear, 
slow to speak." Sirach v. 11 ; iv. 29 : " Be swift 
to hear." " Be not hasty in thy tongue." 

Hebrews i. 3 : " Who being the effulgence of his 
glory, and the very image of his substance, and 
upholding all things by the word of his power." 
Wisdom vii. 26 : " For she (Wisdom) is the bright- 
ness of the everlasting light, the unspotted mir- 
ror of the power of God, and the image of his 
goodness." 

Rom. ix. 21 : " Hath not the potter a right over 
the clay, from the same lump to make one part a 
vessel unto honor, and another unto dishonor ? " 
Wisdom xv. 7 : " For the potter, tempering soft 
earth, fashioneth every vessel with much labor for 
our service ; yea, of the same clay he maketh both 
the vessels that serve for clean uses, and likewise 
also such as serve to the contrary : but what is 
the use of either sort, the potter himself is the 
judge." 

1 Cor. ii. 10, 11: "The Spirit searcheth all 



306 WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

things, yea, the deep things of God. For who 
among men knoweth the things of a man, save the 
spirit of the man, which is in him ? even so the 
things of God none knoweth save the Spirit of 
God." Judith viii. 14: "For ye cannot find the 
depth of the heart of man, neither can ye perceive 
the things that he thinketh : then how can ye 
search out God, that hath made all these things, 
and know his mind, or comprehend his purpose ? " 

Several similar indications of the familiarity of 
the New Testament writers with these apocry- 
phal books might be pointed out. These are not 
express citations, but they are clear appropria- 
tions of the thought and the language of the 
apocryphal writers. We have, then, the most in- 
dubitable proof that the apocryphal books were 
in the hands of the New Testament writers ; and 
so far as New Testament use authenticates an 
Old Testament writing, several of the apocryphal 
books stand on much better footing than do five 
of our Old Testament books. 

It is true that the Hebrew or Palestinian canon 
differed from the Greek or Alexandrian canon ; 
the books which were written in Greek had never 
been translated into the Hebrew, and could not, 
of course, be incorporated into the Hebrew 
canon ; and there was undoubtedly a strong 
feeling among the stricter Jews against recogniz- 
ing any of these later books as Sacred Scrip- 
tures ; nevertheless, the Greek Bible, with all its 
additions, had large currency among the Jews 



THE CANON. 307 

even in Palestine, and the assertion that our 
Lord and his apostles measured the Alexandrian 
Bible by the Palestinian canon, and accepted all 
the books of the latter while declining to recognize 
any of the additions of the former, is sheer as- 
sumption, for which there is not a particle of 
evidence, and against which the facts already 
adduced bear convincingly. Paul, in his letter to 
Timothy, refers to the " Scriptures " as having 
been in the hands of Timothy from his childhood ; 
and we have every reason to believe that the 
Scriptures to which he refers was this Greek col- 
lection containing the Apocrypha. Whatever 
Paul says about the inspnation of the Scriptures 
must be interpreted with this fact in mind. To 
find in these words of Paul the guarantee of the 
inspiration and infallibility of the books of the 
collection which are translated from the Hebrew, 
and not those which are written in Greek, is a 
freak of exegesis not more violent than fantastic. 
We know that Paul read and used some of these 
apocryphal books, and there are several of the 
books in our Hebrew Bible that he never quotes 
or refers to in the remotest way. The attempt 
which is often made to show that the New Tes- 
tament writers have established, by their testi- 
mony, the Old Testament canon, as containing 
just those books which are in our Old Testa- 
ment, and no more, is a most unwarrantable dis- 
tortion of the facts. 

It is true that at the time of Christ the Pales- 



308 WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

tinian Jews had not, for a century or so, added 
any new books to their collection, and were not 
inclined to add any more. Their canon was prac- 
tically closed to this extent, that no new books 
were likely to get in. But it was not yet settled 
that some later books, which had been trying to 
maintain a footing in the canon, should not be put 
out. Esther, Ecclesiastes, and Solomon's Song 
were regarded by some of the Palestinian Jews as 
sacred books, but their right to this distinction 
was hotly disputed by others. This question 
was not settled at the time of our Lord. 

"The canon, " says Davidson, "was not con- 
sidered to be closed in the first century before 
and the first after Christ. There were doubts 
about some portions. The Book of Ezekiel gave 
offense, because some of its statements seemed 
to contradict the Law. Doubts about some of 
the others were of a more serious nature — about 
Ecclesiastes, the Canticles, Esther, and the Prov- 
erbs. The first was impugned because it had 
contradictory passages and a heretical tendency ; 
the second because of its worldly and sensual 
tone ; Esther for its want of religiousness ; and 
Proverbs on account of inconsistencies. This 
skepticism went far to procure the exclusion of 
the suspected works from the canon and their 
relegation to the class of the genuzim. But it 
did not prevail. Hananiah, son of Hezekiah, son 
of Garon, about 32 b. c, is said to have recon- 
ciled the contradictions and allayed the doubts. 



THE CANON. 309 

But these traces of resistance to the fixity of the 
canon were not the last. They reappeared about 
65 a. d., as we learn from the Talmud, when the 
controversy turned mainly upon the canonicity 
of Ecclesiastes, which the school of Schammai, 
which had the majority, opposed ; so that that 
book was probably excluded. The question 
emerged again at a later synod in Jabneh or 
Jamnia, when R. Eleaser ben Asaria was chosen 
patriarch, and Gamaliel the Second deposed. 
Here it was decided, not unanimously, however, 
but by a majority of Hillelites, that Ecclesiastes 
and the Song of Songs ' pollute the hands/ i. e. y 
belong properly to the Hagiographa. This was 
about 90 a. d. Thus the question of the canon- 
icity of certain books was discussed by two 
synods." 1 

By such a plain tale do we put down the fiction, 
so widely disseminated, that the canon of the 
Old Testament was " fixed " long before the time 
of Christ, and, presumably, by inspired men. (it 
was not " fixed," even in Palestine, until sixty 
years after our Lord's death ; several of the 
books were in dispute during the whole apostolic 
period, and these are the very books which are 
not referred to in the New Testament. \ Whether 
the men who finally " fixed " it were exception- 
ally qualified to judge of the ethical and spiritual 
values of the writings in question may be 
doubted. They were the kind of men who slew 

1 Eucyc. Brit.y v. 3. 



310 WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

our Lord and persecuted his followers. When we 
are asked what are our historical reasons for be- 
lieving that Esther and Ecclesiastes and Solo- 
mon's Song are sacred books and ought to be in 
the Old Testament canon, let us answer: It is 
not because any prophet or inspired person ad- 
judged them to be sacred, for no such person had 
anything to say about them ; it is not because 
our Lord and his apostles indorsed them, for 
they do not even mention them ; it is not be- 
cause they held a place in a collection of Sacred 
Scriptures used by our Lord and his apostles, for 
their position in that collection was in dispute at 
that time ; it is because the chief priests and 
scribes who rejected Christ pronounced them sa- 
cred. The external authority for these books re- 
duces to exactly this. Those who insist that all 
parts of the Old Testament are of equal value 
and authority, and that a questioning of the sa- 
credness of one book casts doubts upon the 
whole collection, ought to look these facts in the 
face and see on what a slender thread they sus- 
pend the Bible which they so highly value. 
These later books, says one, " have been deliv- 
ered to us ; they have their use and value, which 
is to be ascertained by a frank and reverent 
study of the texts themselves ; but those who in- 
sist on placing them on the same footing of un- 
disputed authority with the Law, the Prophets, 
and the Psalms, to which our Lord bears direct 
testimony, and so make the whole doctrine of the 



THE CANON. 3U 

canon depend on its weakest part, sacrifice the 
true strength of the evidence on which the Old 
Testament is received by Christians." 1 

Such, then, is the statement with respect to the 
Old Testament canon in the apostolic age. The 
Palestinian canon, which was identical with our 
Old Testament, was practically settled at the 
synod of Jamnia about /()o)a. d., though doubts 
were still entertained by devout Jews concerning 
Esther. The Alexandrian collection, contain- 
ing our apocryphal books, was, however, widely 
circulated ; and as it was the Greek version which 
had been most used by the apostles, so it was the 
Greek version which the early Christian fathers 
universally studied and quoted. Very few if any 
of these Christian fathers of the first two centu- 
ries understood the Hebrew ; they could not, 
therefore, use the Palestinian manuscripts ; the 
Greek Bible was their only treasury of inspired 
truth, and the Greek Bible contained the Apo- 
crypha. Accordingly we find them quoting 
freely as Sacred Scripture all the apocryphal 
books. Westcott gives us a table, in Smith's 
"Bible Dictionary," of citations made from these 
apocryphal books by fifteen of the Greek fathers, 
beginning with Clement of Rome and ending 
with Chrysostom, and by eight Latin writers, be- 
ginning with Tertullian and ending with Augus- 
tine. Every one of these apocryphal books is 
thus quoted with some such formula as "The 

1 The Old Testament in the Jewish Church, p. 175. 



312 WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

Scripture saith/* or " It is written," by one or 
more of these writers ; the Book of Wisdom is 
quoted by all of them except Polycarp and Cyril ; 
Baruch and the Additions to Daniel are quoted 
by the great majority of them ; Origen quotes 
them all, Clement of Alexandria all but one, Cy- 
prian all but two. It will therefore be seen that 
these books must have had wide acceptance as 
Sacred Scriptures during the first centuries of 
the Christian church. In the face of these facts, 
which may be found in sources as unassailable as 
Smith's " Bible Dictionary," we have such state- 
ments as the following, put forth by teachers of 
the people, and indorsed by eminent theological 
professors : — 

" We may say of the apocryphal books of the 
Old Testament that, while some who were not 
Jews and who were unacquainted with Hebrew 
used them to some extent, yet they never gained 
wide acceptance, and soon dropped out alto- 
gether." ■ 

" Certain apocryphal writings have since been 
bound up with the Septuagint, but there is no 
reason to think that they made any part of it in 
the days of our Saviour " ! 

" These books were not received as canonical 
by the Christian fathers, but were expressly de- 
clared to be apocryphal " ! 

The last statements are copied from a volume 
on the Bible, prepared for popular circulation by 
the president of a theological seminary ! 



THE CANON. 313 

(\X. is true that some of the most inquisitive 
and critical of the Christian fathers entertained 
doubts about these apocryphal books ; Melito of 
Sardis traveled to Palestine on purpose to in- 
quire into the matter, and came back, of course, 
with the Palestinian canon to which, however, he 
did not adhere. Origen made a similar investi- 
gation, and seems to have been convinced that 
the later books ought to be regarded as uncanon- 
ical ; nevertheless, he keeps on quoting them ; 
Jerome was the first strenuously to challenge the 
canonicity of these later Greek books and to 
maintain a tolerably consistent opposition to 
them. While, therefore, several of these early 
fathers were led by their investigations in Pales- 
tine to believe that the narrower canon was the 
more correct one, their opinions had but little 
weight with the people at large ; and even these 
fathers themselves freely and constantly quoted 
as Sacred Scripture the questionable writings. 

In (393 the African bishops held a council at 
Hippo, in which the canon was discussed. The 
list agreed upon includes all the Old Testament 
Scriptures of our canon, and, in addition to them, 
Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus, Tobit, Judith, and the 
two books of Maccabees. In 397 another council 
at Carthage reaffirmed the list of its predecessor. 
Augustine was the leader of both councils. 

In spite of the protests of Jerome and of other 
scholars in all the centuries, this list, for sub- 
stance, was regarded as authoritative, until the 



314 WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

Council of Trent, in 1 546, when the long debate 
was finally settled, so far as the Roman Catholic 
Church is concerned, by the adoption of the Au- 
gustinian canon, embracing the apocryphal books, 
the list concluding with the following anathema. 
" If any one will not receive as sacred and au- 
thoritative the whole books with all their parts, 
let him be accursed." This determines the mat- 
ter for all good Catholics. Since 1546, they have 
known exactly how many books their Bible con- 
tains. /And if usage and tradition are and ought 
to be authoritative, they have the strongest rea- 
sons for receiving as sacred the books of their 
Bible ; for it is beyond question that the books 
which they accept and which we reject have been 
received and used as Sacred Scriptures in all the 
ages of the church. Most of us who do not ac- 
cept usage and tradition as authoritative will con- 
tinue, no doubt, to think our own thoughts about 
the matter. 

The Council of Trent marks the definite sepa- 
ration of the Roman Catholic Church from the 
Protestant reformers. Up to this time there 
had been among the reformers some differences 
of opinion respecting the Old Testament books ; 
when they were excluded from the Holy Church 
and were compelled to fall back upon the author- 
ity of the Bible, the present limits of the canon 
at once became an important question. They 
did not settle it all at once. Luther, in making 
his German version of the Bible, translated Ju- 



THE CANON. 315 

dith, Wisdom, Tobit, Sirach, Baruch, 1 and 2 
Maccabees, the Greek additions to Esther and 
Daniel, with the Prayer of Manasseh. Each of 
these books he prefaces with comments of his 
own. First Maccabees he regards as almost 
equal to the other books of Holy Scripture, and 
not unworthy to be reckoned among them. He 
had doubted long whether Wisdom should not 
be admitted to the canon, and he truly says of 
Sirach that it is a right good book, the work of 
a wise man. Baruch and 2 Maccabees he finds 
fault with ; but of none of these apocryphal 
books does he speak so severely as of Esther, 
which he is more than willing to cast out of the 
canon. The fact that Luther translated these 
apocryphal books is good evidence that he 
thought them of value to the church ; neverthe- 
less, he considered the books of the Hebrew 
canon, with the exception of Esther, as occupy- 
ing a higher plane than those of the Apocrypha. 
Gradually this opinion gained acceptance among 
the Protestants ; the apocryphal books were sep- 
arated from the rest, and although by some of 
the Reformed churches, as by the Anglican 
church, they w r ere commended to be read ."for 
example of life and instruction of manners/' they 
ceased to be regarded as authoritative sources of 
Christian doctrine. Since the sixteenth century, 
there has been little question among Protestants 
as to the extent of the canon. The books which 
now compose our Old Testament, and no others, 



316 WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

have been found in the Bible of the Protestants 
for the past three hundred years. The apocry- 
phal books have sometimes been printed between 
the Old and the New Testaments, but they have 
not been used in the churches, 1 nor have they 
been regarded as part of the Sacred Scripture. 

The history of the New Testament canon is 
much less obscure, and may be more briefly 
treated. ^The Bible of the early Christians was 
the Old Testament.^ They relied wholly upon 
this for religious instruction ; they had no thought 
of any other Sacred Scripture. 

I have explained in a former chapter how the 
Epistles and the Gospels originated ; but when 
these writings first came into the hands of the 
disciples there was not, it is probable, any con- 
ception in their minds that these were sacred 
writings, to be ranked along with the books of 
the Old Testament. They read them for instruc- 
tion and suggestion ; they did not at first think 
of them as holy. But their conviction of the 
value and sacredness of these writings soon be- 
gan to strengthen ; we find them quoting Gospels 
and Epistles with the same formula that they 
apply to the Old Testament books ; and thus 
they began to feel the need of making a collec- 
tion of this apostolic literature for use in the 
churches. It is not until the second half of the 
second century } that any such collection comes 

1 The English Church uses some portions of them. 



THE CANON. 317 

into view. It consisted at first of two parts, The 
Gospel and The Apostle ; the first part contained 
the four Gospels, and the second the Acts, thir- 
teen Epistles of Paul, one of Peter, one of John, 
and the Revelation. It will be seen that this 
twofold Testament omitted several of our books, 
— the Epistle to the Hebrews, two of John's Epis- 
tles, one of Peters, and the Epistles of James 
and Jude. 

About this time there was also in circulation 
certain writings which are not now in our canon, 
but which were sometimes included by the au- 
thorities of that time among the apostolic writ- 
ings, and were quoted as Scripture by the early 
fathers. There was a book called " The Gospel 
according to the Egyptians/' and another entitled 
" The Preaching of Peter," and another called 
"The Acts of Paul," and another called "The 
Shepherd of Hermas," and an epistle attributed 
to Barnabas, and several others, all claiming to be 
sacred and apostolic writings. It became, there- 
fore, a delicate and important question for these 
early Christians to decide which of these writings 
were sacred, and which were not ; and they began 
to make lists of those which they regarded as 
canonical. The earliest of these lists is a frag- 
mentary anonymous canon, which was made about 
'sl7Q-j It mentions all the books in our New Tes- 
tament but four, — Hebrews, First and Second 
Peter, and James. 

Irenaeus, who died about 200, had a canon which 



318 WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

included all the books of our New Testament ex- 
cept Hebrews, Jude, James, Second Peter, and 
Third John. First Peter, Second John, and "The 
Shepherd of Hermas " he put by themselves in a 
second class of writings, which he thought ex- 
cellent but not inspired. 

Clement of Alexandria (180) puts into his list 
most of our canonical books, but regards several 
of them as of inferior value, among them He- 
brews, Second John, and Jude. In the same list 
of inferior writings he includes " The Shepherd 
of Hermas," the " Epistle of Barnabas/' and the 
" Apocalypse of Peter." 

Tertullian (200) omits entirely James, Second 
Peter, and Third John, but includes among useful 
though not inspired books, Hebrews, Jude, " The 
Shepherd of Hermas," Second John, and Second 
Peter. 

These are the greatest authorities of the first 
two centuries. No Christian teachers of that day 
were better informed or more trustworthy than 
these, and it will be seen that they were far from 
agreeing with one another or with our canon ; 
that each one of them received as sacred some 
books which we do not possess, and rejected some 
which we receive. 

Coming down into the third century, we find 
Origen (250), one of the great scholars, wrestling 
with the problem. He seems to have made three 
classes of the New Testament writings, the au- 
thentic, the non-authentic, and the doubtful. The 



THE CANON. 319 

authentic books are the Gospels, the Acts, the 
thirteen Epistles of Paul, and the Apocalypse; 
the non-authentic ones are " The Shepherd of 
Hermas," "The Epistle of Barnabas," and several 
other books not in our canon ; and the doubtful 
ones are James, Jude, Second and Third John, 
and Second Peter. It will be seen that Origen 
admits none that are not in our collection, but 
that he is in doubt respecting some that are in it. 

Facts like these are writ large over every page 
of the history of the early church. And yet we 
have eminent theological professors asserting that 
the canon of the New Testament was finally set- 
tled " during the first half of the second century, 
within fifty years after the death of the Apostle 
John." (A more baseless statement could not be 
fabricated^ It is from teachers of this class that 
we hear the most vehement outcries against the 
" Higher Criticism.!^ 

Eusebius, who died in 340, has a list agreeing 
substantially with that of Origen. 

Cyril of Jerusalem (386) includes all of our 
books except the Apocalypse, and no others. 

Athanasius (365) and Augustine (430) have 
lists identical with ours. This indicates a steady 
progress toward unanimity, and when the two 
great councils of Hippo and Carthage confirmed 
this judgment of the two great fathers last named, 
the question of the New Testament canon was 
practically settled. 1 Nevertheless, considerable 

1 It is to be noted, however, that the reception of the doubt 



320 WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

independent judgment on the subject still seems 
to have been tolerated, and writings which we do 
not now receive were long included in the New 
Testament collection. The three oldest manu- 
scripts of the Bible now in existence are the 
Sinaitic, the Vatican, and the Alexandrian Bibles, 
dating from the fourth and the fifth centuries. 
Of these the Sinaitic and the Alexandrian Bibles 
both include some of these doubtful books in the 
New Testament collection ; the Sinai Bible has 
"The Epistle of Barnabas " and " The Shepherd 
of Hernias ; " the Alexandrian Bible the Epistle 
of Clement and one of Athanasius. These old 
Bibles are clear witnesses to the fact that the 
contents of the New Testament were not clearly 
defined even so late as the fifth century. Indeed, 
there was always some freedom of opinion con- 
cerning this matter until the Reformation era. 
Then, of course, the Council of Trent fixed the 
canon of the New Testament as well as of the 
Old for all good Catholics ; and the New Testa- 
ment of the Catholics, unlike their Old Testa- 
ment, is identical with our own. 

The Protestants of that time were still in doubt 
about certain of the New Testament books. Lu- 
ther, as every one knows, was inclined to reject 

ful books into the canon does not imply a recognition of their 
equality with the other books. The distinct admission of their 
inferiority was made by all the ecclesiastical authorities of that 
period. None of the early fathers believed that all these writ- 
ings were equally inspired and equally authoritative. 



THE CANON. 32 1 

the Epistle of James ; he called it '(a right strawy 
epistle.]' The letter to the Hebrews was a good 
book, but not apostolic ; he put it in a subordinate 
class. Jude was a poor transcript of Second 
Peter, and he assigned that also to a lower place. 
" The Apocalypse/' says Davidson, " he consid- 
ered neither apostolic nor prophetic, but put it 
almost on a level with the Fourth Book of Es- 
dras, which he spoke elsewhere of tossing into 
the Elbe." Luther's principle of judgment in 
many of these cases was quite too subjective ; he 
carried the Protestant principle of private judg- 
ment to an extreme ; I only quote his opinions 
to show with what freedom the strong men of 
the Reformation handled these questions of Bib- 
lical criticism. 

Zwingli rejected the Apocalypse. CEcolampa- 
dius placed James, Jude, Second Peter, Second 
and Third John and the Apocalypse along with 
the Apocryphal books, on a lower level than the 
other New Testament Scriptures. 

The great majority of the Reformers, however, 
speedily fixed upon that canon which we now 
receive, and their decision has not been seriously 
called in question since the sixteenth century. 

I have now answered most of the questions 
proposed at the beginning of this chapter. We 
have seen that while the great majority of the 
books in both Testaments have been universally 
received, questions have been raised at various 
times concerning the canonicity of several of the 



322 WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

books in either Testament ; that many good men, 
from the second century before Christ until the 
sixteenth century after Christ, have disputed the 
authority of some of these books. We have seen 
also that quite a number of other books have at 
one time and another been regarded as sacred 
and numbered among the Holy Scriptures ; we 
have seen that the final judgment respecting 
these doubtful books is different in different 
branches of the church, the Roman Catholic 
Church and the Greek Catholic Church admit- 
ting into their canons several books that the Re- 
formed churches exclude from theirs. 

We have seen that the decision which has 
been reached by the several branches of the 
church respecting this matter has been reached 
as the result of discussion and argument ; that 
the canonicity of the disputed books was freely 
canvassed by the church fathers in their writings, 
by the church councils in their assemblies, by the 
Reformers in their inquiries; that no supernat- 
ural methods have been employed to determine 
the canonicity of these several books ; but that 
the enlightened reason of the church has been 
the arbiter of the whole matter. 

The grounds upon which the Jews acted in ad- 
mitting or rejecting books into their Scriptures 
it might be difficult for us to determine. In 
some cases we know that they were fanciful and 
absurd. But the grounds on which the Chris- 
tians proceeded in making up their canon we 
know pretty well. 



THE CANON. 323 

The first question respecting each one of the 
Christian writings seems to have been : " Was it 
written by an apostle ? " If this question could 
be answered in the affirmative, the book was 
admitted. And in deciding this question, the 
Christians of later times made appeal to the 
opinions of those of earlier times ; authority and 
tradition had much to do in determining it. 
" Was it the general opinion of the early church 
that this book was written by an apostle ? " they 
asked. And if this seemed to be the case, they 
were inclined to admit it. Besides, they com- 
pared Scripture with Scripture : certain books 
were unquestionably written by Paul or Luke or 
John ; other books which were doubted were also 
ascribed to them ; if they found the language of 
the disputed book corresponding to that of the 
undisputed book, in style and in forms of expres- 
sion, they judged that it must have been written 
by the same man. Upon such grounds of exter- 
nal and internal evidence, it finally came to be 
believed that all of the New Testament books ex- 
cept four were written by apostles, and that these 
four, Mark, Luke, The Acts of the Apostles, and 
the Epistle to the Hebrews, were written by men 
under the immediate direction of apostles. 

But, it may be said, there have been great dif- 
ferences of opinion on this matter through all the 
ages, down to the sixteenth century ; how do we 
know but that those good and holy men, like 
Ignatius and Clement and Tertullian and Origen 



324 WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

in the early church, and Luther and Zwingli and 
GEcolampadius in the Reformed church, were 
right in rejecting some books that we receive 
and in receiving some that we reject ? 

If you were a good Catholic, that question 
would not trouble you. For the fundamental 
article of your creed would then be, The Holy 
Catholic Church, when she is represented by her 
bishops in a general council, can never make a 
mistake. And the Holy Catholic Church in a 
general council at Trent, in 1546, said that such 
and such books belonged to the Bible, and that 
no others do ; and the council of the Vatican, in 
1870, said the same thing over again, making it 
doubly sure; so, that, as a good Catholic, you 
would have no right to any doubts or questions 
about it. 

But, being a Protestant, you cannot help know- 
ing that all general councils have made grave 
and terrible mistakes ; that no one of them ever 
was infallible ; and so you could not rest satisfied 
with the decisions of Trent and the Vatican, even 
if they gave you the same Bible that you now 
possess, which, of course, they do not. What 
certainty has the Protestant, then, that his canon 
is the correct one ? He has no absolute cer- 
tainty. There is no such thing as absolute cer- 
tainty with respect to historical religious truth. 
But this discussion has made one or two things 
plain to the dullest apprehension. 

The first is that the books of this Bible are not 



THE CANON. 325 

all of equal rank and sacredness. (if there is one 
truth which all the ages, with all their voices, 
join to declare, it is that the Bible is made up of 
many different kinds of books, with very different 
degrees of sacredness and authority. For one, I 
do not wish to part with any of them ; I find in- 
struction in all of them, though in some of them, 
as in Esther and Ecclesiastes, it is rather as rec- 
ords of savagery and of skepticism, from which 
every Christian ought to recoil, that I can see 
any value in them. As powerful delineations of 
the kind of sentiments that the Christian ought 
not to cherish, and the kind of doubts that he 
cannot entertain without imperilling his soul, 
they may be useful. It is not, therefore, at all 
desirable that these ancient records should be 
torn asunder and portions of them flung away. 
That process of mutilation none of us is wise 
enough to attempt. Let the Bible stand ; there 
are good uses for every part of it. But let us re- 
member the lesson which this survey has brought 
home to us, that these books are not all alike, and 
that the message of divine wisdom is spoken to us 
in some of them far more clearly than in others. 
Richard Baxter is an authority in religion for 
whose opinion all conservative people ought to 
entertain respect. He cannot be suspected of 
being a " New Departure " man ; he was a stanch 
Presbyterian, and he passed to the "Saints' Rest" 
nearly two hundred years ago. With a few words 
of his upon the question now before us, this 
chapter may fitly close : — 



326 WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

" And here I must tell you a great and need- 
ful truth, which Christians, fearing to confess, by 
overdoing, tempt men to infidelity. The Scrip- 
ture is like a man's body, where some parts are 
but for the preservation of- the rest, and may be 
maimed without death. The sense is the soul of 
the Scripture, and the letters but the body or ve- 
hicle. The doctrine of the Creed, Lord's Prayer 
and Decalogue, Baptism and the Lord's Supper, 
is the vital part and Christianity itself. The Old 
Testament letter (written as we have it about 
Ezra's time) is that vehicle which is as imperfect 
as the revelation of those times was. But as, 
after Christ's incarnation and ascension, the 
Spirit was more abundantly given, and the reve- 
lation more perfect and sealed, so the doctrine is 
more full, and the vehicle or body, that is the 
words, are less imperfect and more sure to us ; 
so that he which doubteth of the truth of some 
words in the Old Testament or of some circum- 
stances in the New, hath no reason therefore to 
doubt of the Christian religion of which these 
writings are but the vehicle or body, sufficient to 
ascertain us of the truth of the History and Doc- 
trine." * 

1 The Catechizing of Christian Families, p. 36. 



CHAPTER XII. 

HOW THE BOOKS WERE WRITTEN. 

The books of the Old Testament were origi- 
nally written upon skins of some sort. The Tal- 
mud provided that the law might be inscribed on 
the skins of clean animals, tame or wild, or even 
of clean birds. These skins were usually cut 
into strips, the ends of which were neatly joined 
together, making a continuous belt of parchment 
or vellum which was rolled upon two sticks and 
fastened by a thread. They were commonly 
written on one side only, with an iron pen which 
was dipped in ink composed of lampblack dis- 
solved in gall juice. 

The Hebrew is a language quite unlike our 
own in form and appearance. Not only do we 
read it from right to left, instead of from left to 
right, but the consonants only of the several 
words are written in distinct characters on the 
line ; the vowels being little dots or dashes 
standing under the consonants, or within their 
curves. These vowel points were not used in 
the original Hebrew ; they are a modern inven- 
tion, originating some centuries after Christ. It 
is true that it was the belief of the Jews in 



328 WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

former times that these vowel points were an 
original part of the language ; their scholars 
made this claim with great confidence, which 
shows how little reliance is to be placed on Jew- 
ish tradition. The evidence is abundant that the 
Hebrew was originally written without vowels, 
precisely as stenographers often write in these 
days. We know from the testimony of old stu- 
dents and interpreters of the Hebrew that they 
constantly encountered this difficulty in reading 
the language. Write a paragraph of our own lan- 
guage without vowels and look at it. Or, better, 
ask some one else to treat for you in the same 
way a paragraph with which you are not familiar, 
and see if you can decipher it. Undoubtedly, 
you could with some difficulty make out the 
sense of most passages. It would puzzle you at 
first, but after you had had some practice in sup- 
plying the vowels you would learn to read quite 
readily. Stenographers, as I have said, have a 
somewhat similar task. Nevertheless, you would 
sometimes be in uncertainty as to the words. 
Suppose you have the three consonants brd> how 
would you know whether the word was bard, or 
bird, or bread, or board, or brad, or broad, or 
bride, or braid, or brood, or breed ? It might be 
any one of them. You could usually tell what it 
was by a glance at the connection, but you could 
not tell infallibly, for there might be sentences in 
which more than one of these words would make 
sense, and it would be impossible to determine 



HOW THE BOOKS WERE WRITTEN, 329 

which the writer meant to use. Now the old He- 
brew as it came from the hands of the original 
writers was all in this form ; while, therefore, the 
meaning of the writer can generally be gained with 
sufficient accuracy, you see at a glance that abso- 
lute certainty is out of the question ; that the 
Jewish scholars who supplied these vowel points 
a thousand years or more after the original manu- 
scripts were written may sometimes have got the 
wrong word. 

Jerome gives numerous illustrations of this un- 
certainty. In Jer. ix. 21, " Death is come up 
into our windows/' he says that we have for the 
first word the three Hebrew consonants corre- 
sponding to our dbr ; the word may be dabar, 
signifying death, or deber, signifying pestilence ; 
it is impossible to tell which it is. In Habakkuk 
iii. 5, we have the same consonants, and there 
the word is written pestilence. Either word will 
made good sense in either place ; and we are 
perfectly helpless in our choice between them. 
Again, in Isaiah xxvi. 14, we have a prediction 
concerning the wicked, " Therefore hast thou 
visited and destroyed them and made all their 
memory to perish.' , The Hebrew word here 
translated " memory " consists of three conso- 
nants represented by our English zkr ; it may be 
the word zeker, which signifies memory, or the 
word zakar, which signifies a male person. And 
Jerome says that it is believed that Saul was de- 
ceived, perhaps willingly, by the difference in 



330 WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

these words (i Sam. xv.) ; having been com- 
manded to cut off every zeker — memorial or ves- 
tige — of Amalek, he took the word to be zakar, 
instead of zeker, and contented himself with de- 
stroying the males of the army and keeping for 
himself the spoil. Jerome's conjecture in this 
case is sufficiently fanciful ; nevertheless he illus- 
trates the impossibility of determining the exact 
meaning of many Hebrew sentences. This im- 
possibility is abundantly demonstrated by the 
Septuagint, for we find many undoubted errors 
in that translation from the Hebrew into the 
Greek, which have arisen from this lack of pre- 
cision in the Hebrew language. 

When, therefore, we know that the Bible was 
written in such a language — a language without 
vowels — and that it was not until six hundred 
years after Christ that the vowel points were in- 
vented and the words were written out in full, 
the theory of the verbal inerrancy of the text as 
we now have it becomes incredible. Unless the 
men who supplied the vowel points were gifted 
with supernatural knowledge they must have 
made mistakes in spelling out some of these 
words. I do not believe that these mistakes 
were serious, or that they affect in any impor- 
tant way the meaning of the Scripture, but the 
assumption that in this stupendous game of 
guess-work no wrong guesses were made is in 
the highest degree gratuitous. The substantial 
truthfulness of the record is not impeached by 



HOW THE BOOKS WERE WRITTEN. 33 1 

this discovery, but the verbal inerrancy of the 
document can never be maintained by any hon- 
est man who knows these facts. 
* — It is unsafe and mischievous to indulge in a 
priori reasonings about inspiration ; we have had 
too much of that ; but the following proposition 
is unassailable : If the Divine Wisdom had pro- 
posed to deliver to man an infallible book, he 
would not have had it recorded in a language 
whose written words consist only of consonants, 
leaving readers a thousand years after to fill in 
the vowels by conjecture. The very fact that 
such a language was chosen is the conclusive 
and unanswerable evidence that God never de- 
signed to give us an infallible bookrv^ 

We are familiar with the fact that the Old Tes- 
tament writings in general use among the early 
churches were those of the Septuagint. The 
Christians from the second to the sixteenth cen- 
turies knew very little Hebrew. But during all 
these ages the Palestinian Jews and their succes- 
sors in other lands were preserving their own 
Scriptures ; it was they who added at a late day 
— probably as late as the sixth century — the 
vowel points, which were invented in Syria ; and 
when, at length, under the impulse of Biblical 
study which led to the Reformation, Christian 
scholars began to think of going back to the ori- 
ginal Hebrew, they were obliged to obtain from 
the Jews the copies which they studied. It is 
somewhat remarkable that the Jews, who were 



332 WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

the exclusive custodians of the Hebrew writings 
up to the sixteenth century, had not been careful 
to preserve their old manuscripts. After the vowel 
points had been introduced into the text, they 
seem to have been willing that copies not written 
in this manner should pass out of existence. Ac- 
cordingly we have few Hebrew manuscripts that 
are even supposed to be more than six or seven 
hundred years old. There is one copy of the 
Pentateuch which may have been made as early 
as 580 A. d., but this is extremely doubtful ; aside 
from this I do not not know that there are any 
Hebrew Bibles which claim to be older than the 
ninth century. Of these Hebrew manuscripts 
nearly six hundred are now known to be in exist- 
ence, but the greater part of these are only frag- 
mentary copies of the Pentateuch or of single 
books. There are two classes of these — syna- 
gogue rolls, prepared for reading in the way that 
I have described, and manuscripts in the book 
form, some on parchment and some on paper. 

The variations in these manuscripts are few. 
Compared with the Greek manuscripts of the 
New Testament, the accuracy of these Hebrew 
codices is remarkable. It is evident that the 
care of the Scribes to guard their Scriptures 
against error has been scrupulous and vigilant. 
Doubtless this intense devotion to the very letter 
of the sacred books has been exercised for many 
centuries. We know that in the earliest days 
this precision was not sought ; for the Septuagint 



HOW THE BOOKS WERE WRITTEN. 333 

translation, made during the second and third 
centuries before Christ, gives us indubitable 
proof, when we compare it with the Hebrew text, 
that changes, some of them radical and sweeping, 
have been made in the text of the Hebrew books 
since that translation was finished. But it is 
evident that the Scribes at an early day, cer- 
tainly as early as the beginning of the Christian 
era, determined to have a uniform and an un- 
changeable text. For this purpose they chose 
some manuscript copy of the Scriptures, doubt- 
less the one which seemed to them most accu- 
rate, and made that the standard ; all the copies 
made since that time have been religiously con- 
formed to that. Consequently, all the Hebrew 
manuscripts now in existence are remarkably 
uniform. The Old Testament contains more 
than three times as many pages as the New Tes- 
tament ; but while we have more than one hun- 
dred and fifty thousand " various readings" in 
the Greek manuscripts and versions of the New 
Testament, we have less than ten thousand such 
variations in those of the Old Testament. It 
must be remembered, however, that this uniform- 
ity has its source in some copy chosen to be the 
standard hundreds of years after most of the Old 
Testament books were written ; and it does not 
guarantee the close correspondence between this 
copy and the autographs of the original writers. 1 

1 For an interesting discussion of the preservation and trans- 
mission of the Hebrew text, the reader is referred to Mr. Robert- 



334 WH0 WROTE THE BIBLE? 

Our chief interest centres, however, in the 
Greek manuscripts of the Bible preserved and 
transmitted by Christians, and including both 
Testaments. All the oldest and most precious 
documents that we possess belong to this class. 

The original New Testament writings which 
came from the hands of the apostles and their 
amanuenses we do not possess. These were 
probably written, not on skins, but upon the 
papyrus paper commonly used at that day, which 
was a frail and flimsy fabric, and under ordinary 
circumstances would soon perish. Fragments of 
this papyrus have come down to us, but only 
those which were preserved with exceptional 
care. Jerome tells us of a library in Caesarea 
that was partly destroyed, owing to the crum- 
bling of its paper, though it was only a hundred 
years old. Parchment was sometimes used by the 
apostles ; Paul requests Timothy, in his second 
letter, to bring with him, when he comes, certain 
parchments that belong to him. But these ma- 
terials were costly, and it is not likely that the 
apostles used them to any extent in the prepara- 
tion of the books of the New Testament. At 
any rate the autographic copies of these books 
disappeared at an early date. This seems strange 
to us. Placing the estimate that we do upon 
these writings, we should have taken the great- 
est care to preserve them. It is clear that the 

son Smith's The Old Testament in the Jewish Church, Lectures 
ii. and iii. 



HOW THE BOOKS WERE WRITTEN. 335 

Christians into whose hands they fell did not 
value them as highly as we do. As Westcott 
says, "They were given as a heritage to man, 
and it was some time before men felt the full 
value of the gift." 

At the close of the second century there were 
disputes concerning the correct reading of cer- 
tain passages, but neither party appeals to the 
apostolic originals, — showing that they must be- 
fore that time have perished. In after years 
legends were told about the preservation of these 
originals, but these are contradictory and in- 
credible.^. 

—-No manuscript is now in existence which was 
written during the first three centuries.^ But we 
have one or two that date back to the f ourth cen- 
tury ; and from that time through all the ages to 
the invention of printing many copies were made 
of the Sacred Scriptures, in whole or in part, 
which are still in the hands of scholars. It is 
from these old Greek manuscripts that our re- 
ceived text of the New Testament is derived ; by 
a comparison of them the scholars of the seven- 
teenth century made up a Greek New Testa- 
ment which they regarded as approximately ac- 
curate, and from that our English version was 
made. 

The number of these old manuscripts is large, 
and the first general division of them is into " un- 
cials " or "cursives," as they are called; the un- 
cial manuscripts being written in capital letters, 



336 WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

the cursives in small letters more or less con- 
nected, as in our written hand. The uncials are 
the oldest, as they are the fewest ; there are only 
one hundred and twenty-seven of them in all ; 
while of the cursives there are about fifteen hun- 
dred. 

Yet most of these manuscripts are fragmen- 
tary. Some of them contain only the Gospels or 
portions of them ; some of them contain the Acts 
and the Catholic Epistles ; some of them the 
Epistles of Paul or a single epistle ; some are 
selections from the Gospels or the Epistles, pre- 
pared to be read in church, and called lectiona- 
ries. 

Professor Ezra Abbot gives us a classification 
of these manuscripts which will be found in- 
structive. 

" For the New Testament, ... we have man- 
uscripts more or less complete, written in uncial 
or capital letters, and ranging from the fourth to 
the tenth century ; of the Gospels twenty-seven, 
besides thirty small fragments ; of the Acts and 
Catholic Epistles ten, besides six small fragments ; 
of the Pauline Epistles eleven, besides nine small 
fragments, and of the Revelation five. All of 
these have been most thoroughly collated, and 
the text of the most important of them has been 
published. One of these manuscripts, the Si- 
naitic, containing the whole of the New Testa- 
ment, and another, the Vatican, containing much 
the larger part of it, were written probably as 



HOW THE BOOKS WERE WRITTEN. 337 

early as the middle of the fourth century ; two 
others, the Alexandrian and the Ephraem, be- 
long to about the middle of the fifth, of which 
date are two more, containing considerable por- 
tions of the Gospels. A very remarkable manu- 
script of the Gospels and Acts — the Cambridge 
manuscript, or Codex Bezae — belongs to the 
sixth century. ... I pass by a number of small 
but valuable fragments of the fifth and sixth cen- 
turies. As to the cursive manuscripts ranging 
from the tenth century to the sixteenth, we have 
of the Gospels more than six hundred ; of the 
Acts over two hundred ; of the Pauline Epistles 
nearly three hundred ; of the Revelation about 
one hundred, — not reckoning the lectionaries, or 
manuscripts containing the lessons from the 
Gospels, Acts, and Epistles, read in the service of 
the church, of which there are more than four 
hundred." * 

Out of all this vast mass of extant manuscripts, 
only twenty-seven contain the New Testament 
entire. 

The three oldest and most valuable manuscripts 
among those named by Professor Abbot, in the 
passage above, are the Sinaitic, the Vatican, and 
the Alexandrian manuscripts. 

Of these old Bibles perhaps the oldest is the 
one in the Vatican Library at Rome. It was en- 
rolled in that library as late as the year 1475 5 
what its history was before that time is unknown. 

1 Anglo-American Bible Revision, p. 95. 



338 WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

By whose hands or at what place it was written, 
no one can tell. Some have supposed that it 
was brought from Constantinople to Rome, in the 
fifteenth century, by John Bessarion, a learned 
patriarch ; some that it was written in Alexan- 
dria, when that city was the metropolis of the 
world's culture ; some that it was produced in 
Southern Italy when that region was celebrated 
for its learning. The signs favor the latter the- 
ory. The form of the letters is like those found 
on papyri in Herculaneum ; and other manu- 
scripts of the Bible found in southern Italy agree 
remarkably with this one in many peculiar read- 
ings. But this is all guess-work. Nobody 
knows where the old Bible came from or who 
brought it to Rome. 

Some things, however, the old book plainly 
tells us about its own history. It bears the un- 
mistakable marks of great antiquity. The scholar 
who is familiar with old Greek manuscripts can 
judge by looking at a document something about 
its probable age. By the form of the letters, by 
the presence or absence of certain marks of punc- 
tuation, by the general style of the manuscript, 
he can determine within a century or so the date 
at which it was written. 

This old Bible is written in the uncial or cap- 
ital letters ; this would make it tolerably certain 
that it must be older than the tenth century. 
We have scarcely any uncial manuscripts later 
than the tenth century. But other unmistakable 



HOW THE BOOKS WERE WRITTEN. 339 

marks take it back much farther than this. The 
words are written continuously, with no breaks 
or spaces between them ; there are no accents, 
no rough or smooth breathings, no punctuation 
marks of any sort. These are signs of great age. 
Another peculiarity is the manner of the division 
of the books into sections. I cannot stop to de- 
scribe to you the various methods of division 
adopted in antiquity. The present separation 
into chapters and verses was, as you know, a 
quite modern device. But the divisions of this 
old Bible follow a method that we know to have 
been in use at a very early day ; and the conclu- 
sion of all the scholars is that it must have been 
written as early as the year 350, possibly as early 
as 300. 

It is not, however, a roll, but a book in form 
like those we handle every day. Before this 
date manuscripts were generally prepared in this 
way. Martial, the Latin poet, who died about 
100, mentions as a novelty in his day books with 
square leaves, bound together at the edges. 

The Vatican Bible is a heavy quarto, the cov- 
ers are red morocco discolored with age, the 
leaves, of which there are 759, are of fine and 
delicate vellum. It contains the Septuagint 
translation of the Old Testament, except the 
first forty-five chapters in Genesis and a few of 
the Psalms, which have been torn out and lost. 
Of the New Testament writings, the last five 
chapters of Hebrews, First and Second Timothy, 



340 WHO WROTE THE BIBLE ? 

Titus, Philemon, and the Apocalypse are wanting. 
Otherwise both Testaments are complete. 

We may recall another fact, to which allusion 
has been made, that this old Bible contains 
among the Old Testament books those books 
which we now call apocryphal, and that these 
apocryphal books, instead of being divided from 
the rest in a separate group, are mingled with 
them, the order of the books being quite unlike 
that of our Bibles or of the Hebrew canon. The 
apocryphal First Book of Esdras precedes our 
Book of Ezra ; while our Book of Ezra is united 
with Nehemiah, forming the Second Book of Es- 
dras. Judith and Tobit follow Esther, and next 
comes the twelve minor prophets, and so on. 

The same thing is true of all these oldest Bi- 
bles ; they all contain the apocryphal books, and 
these books are mingled with the other books, 
either promiscuously, or by some system of classi- 
fication which accepts them as equal in value 
with the other Old Testament writings. There 
is no indication in these old Bibles that the 
apocryphal books are any less sacred or authori- 
tative than the others. 

Another manuscript Bible, scarcely less vener- 
able and no less precious than the Vatican Bible, 
is the one known as the Sinaitic manuscript. 
This was discovered by Constantine Tischendorf, 
a German scholar, in an ancient convent at the 
base of Mount Sinai. The first journey of Tisch- 
endorf to the Sinaitic peninsula was undertaken 



HOW THE BOOKS WERE WRITTEN. 341 

in 1844, for the express purpose of searching in 
the old monasteries of this neighborhood for an- 
cient copies of the Scriptures that might be pre- 
served in them. The monks of this old convent 
admitted him to their ancient library, — a place 
not greatly frequented by them, — and there in 
the middle of the room he found a waste basket, 
filled with leaves and torn pieces of old parch- 
ment gathered to be burned. In looking them 
over he discovered one hundred and twenty 
leaves of a Bible that seemed to him of great 
antiquity. He asked for these leaves, but when 
they found that he wanted them, the monks be- 
gan to suspect their value, and permitted him to 
take only forty-three of them. In 1853 he re " 
turned again, but this time could not find the 
rest of the precious manuscript. He feared that 
it had been destroyed long before, but this was 
not the case. Stimulated by his desire to pos- 
sess the loose leaves, the monks had made search 
for the rest of the volume, and, using as samples 
the leaves they had refused to give him, they 
had found them all and secreted them. Upon 
his second visit they did not show him the book, 
however, nor reveal to him in any way its exist- 
ence. 

Six years later, in 1859, he returned again, this 
time fortified with a letter from the Emperor of 
Russia, the head of the Greek Church ; and this 
mighty document made the monks open their 
treasures for his inspection. He obtained per- 



342 WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

mission, first, to carry the old Bible to Cairo to be 
copied, and finally, under the imperial influence, 
the monks surrendered it, and suffered it to be 
removed to St. Petersburg, where since 1859 it 
has been sacredly kept. 

" The Sinai Bible/' says Dr. F. P. Woodbury, 
" contains the New Testament, the Epistle of 
Barnabas, a portion of the Shepherd of Hermas, 
and twenty-two books of the Old Testament. 
The whole is written on fine vellum made from 
antelope skins into the largest pages known in 
our ancient manuscripts. While most of the old- 
est manuscripts have only three columns to the 
page, and the Vatican Bible has three, the Sinai 
Bible alone shows four. The letters are some- 
what larger than those of the Vatican and much 
more roughly written. The book contains many 
blunders in copying, and there are a few cases of 
willful omission. Its remote age is attested by 
many of the same proofs that have been men- 
tioned in the description of the Vatican Bible." 1 

It is known that the Emperor Constantine, in 
the year 331, authorized the preparation of fifty 
costly and beautiful copies of the Holy Scrip- 
tures under the care of Eusebius of Caesarea. 
Tischendorf himself thinks — and his conjecture 
is accepted by other scholars — that this is one 
of those fifty Bibles, and that it was sent from 
Byzantium to the monks of this convent by the 

1 From an interesting sketch of " Three Old Bibles," in Sun- 
day Afternoon^ vol. i. pp. 65-71. 



HOW THE BOOKS WERE WRITTEN. 343 

Emperor Justinian, who was its founder. At all 
events, it is incontestably a manuscript of great 
age, certainly of the fourth century, and probably 
of the first half of that century. 

The other great Bible is the one known as 
the Alexandrian, which was presented, in 1628, 
to King Charles I. of England by Cyril Lucar, 
patriarch of Constantinople, who had brought it 
from Alexandria. It was transferred in 1753 
from the king's private library to the British 
Museum, where it is now preserved. It is bound 
in four folio volumes, three of which contain the 
text of the Old and one of the New Testament. 
The portion which contains the Old Testament 
is more perfect than that which contains the 
New, quite a number of leaves having been lost 
from the latter. " The material of which this 
volume is composed is thin vellum, the page 
being about thirteen inches high by ten broad, 
containing from fifty to fifty-two lines on each 
page, each line consisting of about twenty letters. 
The number of pages is 773, of which 640 are 
occupied with the text of the Old Testament and 
133 with the New. The characters are uncial, 
but larger than the Vatican manuscript. There 
are no accents or breathings, no spaces between 
the letters or words save at the end of a para- 
graph, and the contractions, which are not nu- 
merous, are only such as are found in the oldest 
manuscripts. The punctuation consists of a 
point placed at the end of a sentence, usually on 



344 WH0 WROTE THE BIBLE? 

a level with the top of the preceding letter." 1 
The general verdict of scholars is that this manu- 
script belongs to about the middle of the fifth 
century. 

The contents of this old Bible are curious, and 
they are curiously arranged. The first volume 
contains the Pentateuch, Joshua, Judges, Ruth, 
the two books of Samuel, the two books of Kings, 
and the two books of Chronicles. The second 
contains, first, the twelve minor prophets (from 
Hosea to Malachi), then Isaiah, Jeremiah, Baruch, 
Lamentations, The Epistle of yererniah, Ezekiel, 
Daniel, Esther, Tobzt, yudith, Esdras L (the 
apocryphal Esdras), Esdras II. (including our 
Nehemiah and part of our Ezra), and the four 
books of the Maccabees. The third volume con- 
tains An Epistle of Athanasius to Marcellenus 
on the Psalms ; The Hypothesis of Eusebius on 
the Psalms; then the Book of the Psalms, of 
which there are one hundred and fifty-one, and 
fifteen Hymns ; then Job, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, 
Canticles, Wisdom of Solomon, and Ecclesiasti- 
cus, or Sirach. The fourth volume contains the 
four Gospels, the Acts, the seven Catholic Epis- 
tles (one of James, two of Peter, three of John, 
and one of Jude), fourteen Epistles of Paul (in- 
cluding the one to the Hebrews), The Revelation 
of John, two Epistles of Clement to the Corin- 
thians, and eight Psalms of Solomon. 

This, it will be admitted, is a generous Bible. 

1 Encyc. Brit., i. p. 496. 



HOW THE BOOKS WERE WRITTEN. 345 

It contains most of the apocryphal books, and 
several others that we do not find in the other 
collections. It is probable that the works of 
Athanasius and Eusebius on the Psalms were 
admitted rather as introduction or commentary 
than as text ; but the rest, judging from the posi- 
tions in which they stand, must have been re- 
garded as Sacred Scriptures. 

These, then, are the three oldest, most com- 
plete, and most trustworthy copies of the Sacred 
Scriptures now in existence. By all scholars 
they are regarded as precious beyond price ; and 
any reading in which they agree would probably 
be regarded as the right reading, if all the other 
manuscripts in the world were against them. 

I have suggested that these old manuscripts 
do not always agree. The fact is that no two of 
them are exactly alike, and that there are a great 
many slight differences between those which are 
most closely assimilated. Of these differences 
Professor Westcott says that " there cannot be 
less than 120,000, — though of these a very large 
proportion consists of differences of spelling and 
isolated aberrations of scribes." It is not gen- 
erally difficult for the student on comparing them 
to tell which is the right reading. A word may 
be misspelled, for example, in several different 
ways ; the student knows the right way to spell 
it, and is not in doubt concerning the word. 
" Probably/' says Mr. Westcott, " there are not 
more than from sixteen hundred to two thousand 



346 WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

places in which the true reading is a matter of 
uncertainty, even if we include in this questions 
of order, inflection, and orthography ; the doubt- 
ful readings by which the sense is in any way 
affected are very much fewer, and those of dog- 
matic importance can be easily numbered." 

The ways in which these errors and variations 
arose are easily explained. The men who copied 
these manuscripts were careful men, many of 
them, but all of them were fallible. Sometimes 
they would mistake a letter for another letter 
much like it, and change the form of a word in 
that way ; sometimes there would be two clauses 
of a sentence ending with the same word, and the 
eye of the copyist, glancing back to the manu- 
script after writing the first of these words, would 
alight upon the second one, and go on from that ; 
so that the clause preceding it would be omitted. 
Sometimes in copying the continuous writing of 
the uncial manuscripts, mistakes would be made 
in dividing words. For example, if a number of 
English words, written in close order, with no 
spaces between them, were given you to copy, 
and you found "inf an cy," you might make two 
words of it or one ; and if you were a little care- 
less you might write it " in fancy " when it should 
be " infancy/' or vice versa. A case might arise 
in which it would be difficult for you to tell 
whether it should be "in fancy" or u infancy." 
Such uncertainties the copyists encountered, and 
such mistakes they sometimes made. 



HOW THE BOOKS WERE WRITTEN. 347 

Mistakes of memory they also made in copy- 
ing, just as I sometimes do when I undertake to 
copy a passage from Mr. Westcott or Mr. David- 
son into one of these chapters. I look upon the 
book, and take a sentence in my mind, but per- 
haps while I am writing it down I will change 
slightly the order of the words, or it may be put 
a word of my own in the place of another that 
much resembles it, as "but" for " though," or 
" from " for " out of," or " doubtless " for " without 
doubt." I try to copy very exactly, but there are, 
unquestionably, now and then such slips as these 
in my quotations. And such mistakes were made 
by the copyists of the Old Scriptures. 

There are some instances of intentional changes. 
Sometimes a copyist evidently substituted a word 
that he thought was plainer for one that was more 
obscure ; a more elegant word for one less ele- 
gant ; a grammatical construction for one that 
was not grammatical. 

Other differences have arisen from the habit 
of some of the copyists or owners of manuscripts 
of writing glosses, or brief explanatory notes, on 
the margin. Some of these marginalia were 
copied by subsequent scribes into the text, where, 
in our version, they still remain. Some of them, 
however, were removed in the late revision. 

The great majority of these errors are, how- 
ever, as I have said, extremely unimportant ; and 
nearly all of them seem to have arisen in the 
ways I have suggested, — through simple care- 



348 WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

lessness, and not with any intent of corrupting 
the text. 



The translations of the Bible which were made 
in early days into other languages than our own 
must be dismissed with the briefest mention. 
The most important version of the Old Testa- 
ment was the Septuagint, of which nothing more 
needs to be said. 

You will remember that the Hebrew was a 
dead language while our Lord was on the earth, 
the Jews of Palestine speaking the Aramaic. For 
their use, translations of the Hebrew into the 
Aramaic, called Targums, were made. There is 
a great variety of these, and there are many opin- 
ions about their age ; but it is not likely that the 
oldest of them was committed to writing before 
the second century a. d. They are curious speci- 
mens of the translator's work, combining text 
and commentary in a remarkable manner. Ad- 
ditions and changes are freely made ; the simple 
sentences of the old record are greatly expanded ; 
not only is a spade generally called a useful lig- 
neous and ferruginous agricultural implement, 
but many things are said concerning the afore- 
said spade which Moses or David or Isaiah never 
dreamed of saying. 

For example, in Judges v. 10, the Hebrew is 
literally translated in our English Bible thus : 
" Speak, ye that ride on white asses, ye that sit 
in judgment and walk by the way." The Tar- 



HOW THE BOOKS WERE WRITTEN. 349 

gum of Jonathan expatiates thereon as follows : 
" Those who had interrupted their occupations 
are riding on asses covered with many colored 
caparisons, and they ride about freely in all the 
territory of Israel, and congregate to sit in judg- 
ment. They walk in their old ways, and are 
speaking of the power Thou hast shown in the 
land of Israel," etc. This may be pronounced a 
remarkably free translation ; and the Targums 
generally evince a similar liberality of sentiment 
and phraseology. 

Besides these, the ancient translations of the 
Bible, which must be mentioned, are the Old 
Latin, made in the second century, out of which, 
by many revisions, grew that Latin Vulgate which 
is now used in the Catholic ritual ; an ancient 
Syriac version of about the same age ; two 
Egyptian versions, in different dialects, made in 
the third century ; the Peshito-Syriac, the Gothic, 
and the Ethiopic in the fourth, and the Armenian 
in the fifth ; besides several later translations, 
including the Arabic and the Slavonic. These 
ancient translations are all of value to modern 
scholars in helping them to reach more certain 
conclusions respecting the nature of the Sacred 
Scriptures and the right reading in disputed 
passages. 

The ages which we have been traversing in this 
chapter — when the Bible was a manuscript — 
were ages of great darkness. The copies of the 
book were few, and the common people could 



350 WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

neither possess them nor read them. It is hard 
for us who have had the book in our hands from 
our infancy, who have gone to it so freely for 
light in darkness, for comfort in sorrow, for wis- 
dom to work with, for weapons to fight with, to 
understand how men could have lived the life of 
faith without it ; how a godly seed could have 
been nourished in the earth without the sincere 
milk of the word for them to feed on. 

It was indeed a great privation that they suf- 
fered, but we must not suppose that they were 
left without witness. (For there is another and 
even a clearer revelation than the written word, 
and that is a godly life. Godly lives there were 
in all these dark times ; and it was at their fires 
that the torch of gospel truth was kindled and 
kept burning. There may be reason for a ques- 
tion whether we have not come to trust in these 
times too much in a word that is written, and to 
undervalue that other revelation which God is 
making of his truth and love in the characters 
of his children. For it is only in the light that 
Christ is constantly manifesting to the world in 
the lives of men that we can see any meaning in 
the words of the book. " The Christian/' says 
Dr. Christlieb, " is the world's Bible.'/ This is 
the word that is known and read of men. Let it 
be our care to make it, not an infallible, but a 
clear, an adequate, and a safe revelation of the 
truth and love of God to men. 



CHAPTER XIIL 

HOW MUCH IS THE BIBLE WORTH? 

Of the Bible as a book among books, of the 
human elements which enter into its composi- 
tion, some account has been given in the preced- 
ing chapters. But in these studies the whole 
story of the Bible has not been told. There is 
need, therefore, that we should enlarge our view 
somewhat, and take more directly into account 
certain elements with which we have not hitherto 
been chiefly concerned. 

Our study has, indeed, made a few things plain. 
Among them is the certainty that the Bible is 
not an infallible Book, in the sense in which it is 
popularly supposed to be infallible. When we 
study the history of the several books, the his- 
tory of the canon, the history of the distribution 
and reproduction of the manuscript copies, and 
the history of the versions, — when we discover 
that the " various readings " of the differing 
manuscripts amount to one hundred and fifty thou- 
sand, the impossibility of maintaining the verbal 
inerrancy of the Bible becomes evident. We see 
how human ignorance and error have been suf- 
fered to mingle with this stream of living water 



352 WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

throughout all its course ; if our assurance of 
salvation were made to depend upon our know- 
ledge that every word of the Bible was of divine 
origin, our hopes of eternal life would be alto- 
gether insecure. 

The book is not infallible historically. It is a 
veracious record ; we may depend upon the truth- 
fulness of the outline which it gives us of the his- 
tory of the Jewish people ; but the discrepancies 
and contradictions which appear here and there 
upon its pages show that its writers were not 
miraculously protected from mistakes in dates 
and numbers and the order of events. 

It is not infallible scientifically. It is idle to 
try to force the narrative of Genesis into an exact 
correspondence with geological science. It is 
a hymn of creation, wonderfully beautiful and 
pure ; the central truths of monotheistic religion 
and of modern science are involved in it ; but it 
is not intended to give us the scientific history 
of creation, and the attempt to make it bear this 
construction is highly injudicious. 

It is not infallible morally. By this I mean 
that portions of this revelation involve an imper- 
fect morality. Many things are here commanded 
which it would be wrong for us to do. This is 
not saying that these commands were not divinely 
wise for the people to whom they were given ; 
nor is it denying that the morality of the New 
Testament, which is the fulfillment and consum- 
mation of the moral progress which the book 



HOW MUCH IS THE BI1.ZE WORTH? 353 

records, is a perfect morality ; it is simply assert- 
ing that the stages of this progress from a lower 
to a higher morality are here clearly marked ; 
that the standards of the earlier time are there- 
fore inadequate and misleading in these later 
times ; and that any man who accepts the Bible 
as a code of moral rules, all of which are equally 
binding, will be led into the gravest errors. It 
is no more true that the ceremonial legislation of 
the Old Testament is obsolete than that large 
portions of the moral legislation are obsolete. 
The notions of the writers of these books con- 
cerning their duties to God were dim and imper- 
fect; so were their notions concerning their duties 
to man. All the truth that they could receive 
was given to them ; but there were many truths 
which they could not receive, which to us are as 
plain as the daylight. 

Not to recognize the partialness and imperfec- 
tion of this record in all these respects is to be 
guilty of a grave disloyalty to the kingdom of the 
truth. With all these facts staring him in the 
face, the attempt of any intelligent man to main- 
tain the theoretical and ideal infallibility of all 
parts of these writings is a criminal blunder. 
Nor is there any use in loudly asserting the in- 
errancy of these books, with vehement denuncia- 
tions of all who call it in question, and then in a 
breath admitting that there may be some errors 
and discrepancies and interpolations. Perfection 
is perfection. To stoutly affirm that a thing is 



354 * wm ' ROTE THE BIBLE? 

perfect, and the admit that it may be in some 
respects imperi-Vct, is an insensate procedure. 
Infallibility is infallibility. The Scriptures are, 
or they are not, infallible. The admission that 
there may be a few errors gives every man the 
right, nay it lays upon him the duty, of finding 
what those errors are. Our friends who so stur- 
dily assert the traditional theory can hardly be 
aware of the extent to which they stultify them- 
selves when their sweeping and reiterated asser- 
tion that the Bible can never contain a mistake is 
followed, as it always must be, by their timid and 
deprecatory, " hardly ever." The old rabbinical 
theory, as adopted and extended by some of the 
post-Reformation theologians, that the Bible was 
verbally dictated by God and is absolutely accu- 
rate in every word, letter, and vowel-point, and 
that it is therefore blasphemy to raise a question 
concerning any part of it, is a consistent theory. 
Between this and a free but reverent inquiry into 
the Bible itself, to discover what human elements 
it contains and how it is affected by them, there 
is no middle ground. That it is useless and mis- 
chievous to make for the Bible claims that it no- 
where makes for itself, — to hold and teach a 
theory concerning it which at once breaks down 
when an intelligent man begins to study it with 
open mind — is beginning to be very plain. The 
quibbling, the concealment, the disingenuousness 
which this method of using the Bible involves 
are not conducive to Christian integrity. This 



HOW MUCH IS THE BL & WORTH? 355 

kind of " lying for God " haeid^ifen hundreds of 
thousands already into irreconcilable alienation 
from the Christian church. L j t is time to stop it. 
How did this theory of the infallibility of the 
Bible arise? Those who have followed these 
discussions to this point know that it has not al- 
ways been held by the Christian church. The 
history of the canon, told with any measure of 
truthfulness, will make this plain. The history 
of the variations between the Septuagint and the 
Hebrew shows, beyond the shadow of a doubt, 
that this theory of the unchangeable and absolute 
divinity of the words of the Scripture had no 
practical hold upon transcribers and copyists in 
the early Jewish church. The New Testament 
writers could not have consistently held such a 
theory respecting the Old Testament books, else 
they would not have quoted them, as they did, 
with small care for verbal accuracy. They be- 
lieved them to be substantially true, and there- 
fore they give the substance of them in their 
quotations ; but there is no such slavish atten- 
tion to the letter as there must have been if they 
had regarded them as verbally dictated by God 
himself. The Christian Fathers were inclined, 
no doubt, to accept the rabbinical theories of 
inspiration respecting the Old Testament ; but 
they sometimes avoid the difficulties growing out 
of manifest errors in the text by a theory of an 
inner sense which is faultless, frankly admitting 
that the natural meaning cannot always be de- 



356 WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

fended. As to the early Reformers, we have 
seen how freely they handled the Sacred Writ- 
ings, submitting them to a scrutiny which they 
would not have ventured upon if they had be- 
lieved concerning them what we have been 
taught, fit was not until the period succeeding 
the Reformation that this dogma of Biblical In- 
fallibility was clearly formulated and imposed 
upon the Protestant churches.) As taught by 
Quenstedt and Voetius and Calovius, the dogma 
asserts that " not only the substance of truth and 
the views proposed in their minutest detail, but 
even the identical words, all and in particular, 
were supplied and dictated by the Holy Ghost. 
Not a word is contained in the Holy Scriptures 
which is not in the strictest sense inspired, the 
very interpunctuation not excepted. . . . Errors 
of any sort whatever, even verbal or grammati- 
cal, as well as all inelegancies of style, are to be 
denied as unworthy of the Divine Spirit who is 
throughout the primary author of the Bible.' ' 1 
This view was long maintained with all strict- 
ness, and many a man has been made a heretic 
for denying it. Within the last century the 
form of the doctrine has been somewhat modified 
by theologians, yet the substance of it is still 
regarded as essential orthodoxy. Dr. Charles 
Hodge, in his "Theology," vol. i. p. 152, says, 
" Protestants hold that the Scriptures of the Old 
and New Testaments are the word of God, writ- 

1 The Doctrine of Sacred Scripture, ii. p. 209. 



HOW MUCH JS THE BIBLE WORTH? 357 

ten under the inspiration of God the Holy- 
Ghost, and are therefore infallible, and conse- 
quently free from all error, whether of doctrine, 
of fact, or of precept/' And again (p. 163), " All 
the books of Scripture are equally inspired. All 
alike are infallible in what they teach." Such is 
the doctrine now held by the great majority of 
Christians, /intelligent pastors do not hold it, but 
the body of the laity have no other conception^ 

Whence is it derived ? Where do the teachers 
quoted above get their authority for their affir- 
mations ? 

Not, as we have seen, from any statements of 
the Bible itself. There is not one word in the 
Bible which affirms or implies that this character 
of inerrancy attaches to the entire collection of 
writings, or to any one of them. 

The doctrine arose, as I have said, in the sev- 
enteenth century, and it was in part, no doubt, a 
reflection of the teaching of the later rabbins, 
whose fantastic notions about the origin of their 
sacred books I have before alluded to. It was 
also developed, as a polemical necessity, in the 
exigencies of that conflict with the Roman Cath- 
olic theologians which followed the Reformation. 
The eminent German scholar and saint, Professor 
Tholuck, gives the following account of its origin : 
---"In proportion as controversy, sharpened by 
Jesuitism, made the Protestant party sensible of 
an externally fortified ground of combat, in that 
same proportion did Protestantism seek, by the 



358 WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

exaltation of the outward authoritative character 
of the Sacred Writings, to recover that infallible 
authority which it had lost through its rejection 
of infallible councils and the infallible authority of 
the Pope. In this manner arose, not earlier than 
the seventeenth century, those sentiments which 
regarded the Holy Scripture as the infallible pro- 
duction of the Divine Spirit — in its entire con- 
tents and its very form — so that not only the 
sense but also the words, the letters, the Hebrew 
vowel points, and the very punctuation were re- 
garded as proceeding from the Spirit of God." * 
The fact that the doctrine had this origin is itself 
suspicious. A theory which is framed in the 
heat of a great controversy, by one party in the 
church, is apt to be somewhat extreme. 

The strength of the doctrine lies, however, in 
the fact that it is a theological inference from the 
doctrine of God. " God is the author of the 
Bible," men have said ; "God is omniscient ; he 
can make no mistakes ; therefore the Book must 
be infallible. To deny that it is infallible is to 
deny that it is God's book ; if it is not his book 
it is worthless." Or, putting it in another form, 
they have said, "The Bible is an inspired book. 
God is the source of inspiration. He cannot in- 
spire men to write error. Therefore every word 
of the inspired book must be true." This is what 
the logicians call an a priori argument. The 
view of what inspiration is, and of what the Bible 

1 Theological Essays, collected by George R. Noyes. 



HOW MUCH IS THE BIBLE WORTH? 359 

is, are deduced from our theory of God. It 
amounts to just this: If God is what we think 
him to be, he must do what seems wise to us. 
This is hardly a safe argument. Doubtless we 
would have said beforehand that if God, who is 
all-wise and all-powerful, should create a world, 
he would make one free from suffering and every 
form of evil. We find, however, that he has not 
made such a world. And it may be wiser for us, 
instead of making up our minds beforehand what 
God must do, to try and find out what he has 
done. It might seem to us, doubtless, that if he 
has given us a revelation, it must be a faultless 
revelation. But has he ? That is the question. 
We can only know by studying the revelation it- 
self. We have no right to determine beforehand 
what it must be. We might have said with equal 
confidence, that if God wished to have his truth 
taught in the world, he would certainly send 
infallible teachers. He has not done so. The 
treasure of his truth is in earthen vessels, to-day. 
Has it not always been so ? 

^•The trouble in this whole matter arises from 
the fact that men have made up their theories of 
the Bible out of their ideas about God, and have 
then gone to work to fit the facts of the Bible to 
their preconceived theories. This has required a 
great deal of stretching and twisting and lopping 
off here and there ; the truth has been badly dis- 
torted, sometimes mutilated. The changed view 
of the Bible, which greatly alarms some good peo- 



360 WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

pie, arises from the fact that certain honest men 
have determined to go directly to the Bible itself 
and find out by studying it what manner of book 
it is. They have discovered that it is not pre- 
cisely such a book as it has been believed to be, 
and the answer that they make to those who hold 
the old theory about it is simply this : " We can- 
not believe what you have told us about the 
Bible, because the Bible contradicts you. It is 
because we believe the Bible itself that we reject 
your theory. We believe that the Bible is an 
inspired book, nay, that it is by eminence The 
Inspired Book ; but when you ask us ' What is 
an inspired book ? ' instead of making up a defini- 
tion of inspiration out of our own heads, we only 
say, ' It is such a book as the Bible is/ and then 
we proceed to frame our definition of inspiration 
by the study of the Bible. Therefore, when you 
say that inspiration must imply infallibility, we 
answer, No ; it does not ; for here is The In- 
spired Book and it is not infallible." 

In what sense the book is inspired we may be 
able, after a little, to see more clearly. For the 
present I only desire to point out the sources of 
the traditional doctrine of the Bible, and the 
sources of the new doctrine. The one is the re- 
sult of the speculations of men about what the 
Bible must be ; the other is the result of a care- 
ful and reverent study of the Bible itself. 

What, then, do we find the Bible to be ? 

I. It is the book of righteousness. No other 



HOW MUCH IS THE BIBLE WORTH? 36 1 

book in the world fixes our thoughts so steadily 
upon the great interest of character. Whatever 
else the Bible may show us or may fail to show 
us, it does keep always before us the fact that 
the one great concern of every man is to be right 
in heart and in life. Righteousness tendeth to 
life ; righteousness is salvation ; Jehovah is He 
who loveth righteousness and hateth iniquity, 
and in his favor is life ; these are the truths 
which form the very substance of this revelation. 
It is quite true that in the application of this 
principle to the affairs of every day, the early 
records show us much confusion and uncertainty ; 
the definitions of righteousness which sufficed for 
the people of that time would not suffice for us 
at all ; but the fact remains that the only inter- 
est of this Book in the individuals and the races 
which it brings before us is in their loyalty 
or disloyalty to that ideal of conduct which it 
always lifts up before us. Righteousness is 
life ; righteousness is salvation ; this is the one 
message of the Bible to men. There are rites 
and ceremonies, but these are not the princi- 
pal thing ; " To obey is better than sacrifice, and 
to hearken than the fat of rams." " He hath 
showed thee, O man, what is good ; and what 
doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, 
and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy 
God ? " This great truth of the Bible has been 
but imperfectly apprehended, even among mod- 
ern Christians ; there is always a tendency to 



362 WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

make the belief in sound dogma, or the per- 
formance of decorous rites, or the experience of 
emotional raptures the principal thing ; but the 
testimony of the Bible to the supremacy of char- 
acter and conduct is clear and convincing, and 
the world is coming to understand it. 

Now for any man who cares for the right, to 
whom character is more precious than anything 
else in the world, this book is worth more than 
any other book can be. Even the Old Testa- 
ment narratives, indistinctly as they reveal the 
real nature of true conduct to us in this day, 
show us plainly the fact that nothing else in the 
world is to be compared with it ; and the strug- 
gles and temptations of the heroes of that old 
book are full of instruction for us ; their failures 
and follies and sins admonish and warn us ; their 
steadfastness and fidelity inspire and hearten us. 

II. The Bible is the record of the development 
of the kingdom of righteousness in the world. 
Man knows intuitively that he ought to do right ; 
his notion of what is right is continually being 
purified and enlarged. The Bible is the record 
of this moral progress in the one nation of the 
earth to which morality has been the great con- 
cern. We have seen, clearly enough, the imper- 
fection of the ethical standards to which the early 
Hebrew legislation was made to conform ; we 
have also seen that this legislation was always a 
little in advance of the popular morality, leading 
it on to purer conceptions and better practices. 



HOW MUCH IS THE BIBLE WORTH? 363 

The legislation concerning divorce, the legislation 
regulating blood-vengeance, recognizes the evils 
with which it deals and accommodates itself to 
them, but always with the purpose and the result 
of giving to men a larger thought and a better 
standard. Laws which conformed to our moral 
ideal would have been powerless to control such a 
semi-barbarous people as the Hebrews were when 
they came out of Egypt. The higher morality 
must be imparted little by little ; one principle 
after another must be drilled into their apprehen- 
sion ; they could not well be learning more than 
one or two simple lessons at a time, and while 
they were learning these, other coarse and cruel 
and savage practices of theirs must be " winked 
at," as Paul says. Against any rule more strict 
at this early time the Hebrews would have re- 
volted ; the divine wisdom of this legislation is 
seen in this method which takes men as they are, 
and does for them the thing that is feasible, pa- 
tiently leading them on and up to higher ground. 
If you would seize a running horse by the rein and 
stop him, you had better run with him for a 
little. This homely parable illustrates much of 
the Old Testament legislation which we find so 
defective, when judged by our standards. 

It is in this larger sense that we see the signs 
of divinity in this old Book. It is a book of in- 
spiration because it is the record of an inspired 
or divinely guided development ; because the life 
it shows as unfolding is divine ; because the goal 



364 WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

to which we see the people steadily conducted in 
its vivid chapters is the goal which God has 
marked for human progress ; because it gives us 
the origin and growth of the kingdom of God in 
the world. 

" Whence came," asks one, " and of what man- 
ner of spirit is this anti-historic power in Israel 
and the Bible ? Some inner principle of devel- 
opment struggles against the outward historical 
environment, and will not rest until it prevails. 
What was it which selected Israel, and in one 
narrow land, while all the surrounding country 
was sinking, lifted man up in spite of himself? 
which along the course of one national history 
carried on a progressive development of religious 
life and truth, while other peoples, though taught 
by many wise men and seers, and not without 
their truths, still can show no one connected and 
progressive revelation like this ?" 1 

What is the power that has wrought all this 
but the divine Power? If you ask for a proof of 
the existence of God, I point you to the life of 
the Jewish people as the Bible records it. That 
history is the revelation of God. In the record of 
this nation's life, in its privileges and its vicissi- 
tudes, its captivities and its restorations, its bless- 
ings and its chastenings, its institutions and its 
laws, its teachers and its legislators, its seers and 
its lawgivers, in all the forces that combine to 
make up the great movement of the national 

1 Old Faiths in New Light, p. 81. 



HOW MUCH IS THE BIBLE WORTH? 365 

life, I see God present all the while, shaping the 
ends of this nation, no matter how perversely it 
may rough-hew them, till at last it stands on an 
elevation far above the other nations, breathing a 
better atmosphere, thinking worthier and more 
spiritual thoughts of God, obeying a far purer 
moral law, holding fast a nobler ideal of right- 
eousness, — polytheism gradually and finally 
rooted out of the national consciousness ; the 
family established and honored as in no other 
nation ; woman lifted up to a dignity and purity 
known nowhere else in the world ; the Sabbath 
of rest sanctified ; the principles of the decalogue 
fastened in the convictions of the people, the 
sure foundations laid of the kingdom of God in 
the world. 

We are quite too apt unduly to disparage Juda- 
ism. Doubtless the formalism that our Lord 
found in it needed rebuke ; its worship and its 
morality were yet far away from the ideal when 
Jesus came to earth ; nevertheless, compared with 
all the peoples round about them even then — 
compared with classic Greeks and noble Romans 
— the ethical and spiritual development of the 
Jews had reached a higher stage. It is not ex- 
travagant to claim for this race the moral leader- 
ship of the world. Hear Ernest Renan, no cham- 
pion of orthodoxy, as you know : (< I am eager, 
gentlemen," — I quote from a lecture of his on 
" The Share of the Semitic People in the History 
of Civilization," — " to come at the prime ser- 



366 WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

vice which the Semitic race has rendered to the 
world ; its peculiar work, its providential mis- 
sion, if I may so express myself. We owe to 
the Semitic race neither political life, art, poe- 
try, philosophy, nor science. We owe to them 
religion. The whole world — we except India, 
China, Japan, and tribes altogether savage — has 
adopted the Semitic religions" Speaking then 
of the gradual decay of the various pagan faiths 
of the Aryan races, Renan continues : " It is 
precisely at this epoch that the civilized world 
finds itself face to face with the Jewish faith. 
Based upon the clear and simple dogma of the 
divine unity, discarding naturalism and panthe- 
ism by the marvelously terse phrase, ' In the be- 
ginning God created the heavens and the earth/ 
possessing a law, a book, the depository of grand 
moral precepts and of an elevated religious poetry, 
Judaism had an incontestable superiority, and it 
might have been foreseen then that some day the 
world would become Jewish, that is to say, would 
forsake the old mythology for monotheism." x -^L 
Here is the testimony of a man who can be 
suspected of no undue leanings toward the re- 
ligion of the Bible, to the fact that the world is 
indebted for its great thoughts of religion to the 
Semitic races, and chiefly to the Hebrew race ; 
that the religion of Judaism, brought into com- 
parison with the other religions, is incontestably 
superior. Now any man who believes in religion 

1 Religious History and Criticism, pp. 159, 160. 



HOW MUCH IS THE BIBLE WORTH? 367 

and in God must believe that the people to whom 
such a task was committed must have been 
trained by God to perform it. The history of 
this nation will then be the history of this train- 
ing. That is exactly what the Old Testament 
is. No disputes over the nature of inspiration 
must be suffered to obscure this great fact. The 
Old Testament Scriptures do contain in biog- 
raphy and history, in statute and story and song 
and sermon, the records of the life of the na- 
tion to which God at sundry times and in divers 
manners was revealing himself ; which he was 
preparing to be the bearer of the torch of his 
own truth into all the world. And now I ask 
whether anybody needs to be told that these 
records are precious, precious above all price ? 
Are there any authentic portions of them that 
any man can afford to despise ? Is not every 
step in the progress of this people out of savagery 
into a spiritual faith, matter of the profoundest 
interest to every human soul ? Even the dull- 
ness and ignorance and crudity of this people, — 
even the crookedness and blindness of their lead- 
ers and teachers, are full of instruction for us ; 
they show us with what materials and what 
instruments the divine wisdom and patience 
wrought out this great result. What other book 
is there that can compare in value with this book, 
which tells us the way of God with the people 
whom he chose, as Renan declares, to teach the 
world religion ? And when one has firmly grasped 



368 WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

this great fact, that the Bible contains the history 
of the religious development of the Jewish peo- 
ple under providential care and tuition, how little 
is he troubled by the small difficulties which grow 
out of theories of inspiration ! " We can listen/' 
says Dr. Newman Smyth, " with incurious com- 
placency while small disputants discuss vehe- 
mently the story of the ark or Jonah's strange 
adventure. . . . After all the work of the critics, 
the Bible still remains, the great, sublime, endur- 
ing work of the Eternal who loves righteousness 
and hates iniquity." 1 

But what have I been vindicating ? The Bible ? 
Nay, I have carefully restricted my argument to 
the Old Testament. It is in behalf of the Old 
Testament writings alone that I have sought to 
establish this exalted claim. What I have shown 
you is only the pedestal on which the beauty and 
strength of the Bible rests, the enduring portals 
which open into the glory that excelleth. The 
Old Testament shows us the progressive revela- 
tion of God to the Jewish people ; the New Tes- 
tament gives us the consummation of that work, 
the perfect flower of that growth of centuries. 
After shadows and hints and refracted lights of 
prophecy, breaks at last upon the world the Light 
that lighteth every man ! When the fullness of 
time had come, God sent forth his Son. It was 
for this that the age-long discipline of this people 
had been preparing them. True, " He came to 

1 Old Faiths in New Light, pp. 60, 61. 



HOW MUCH IS THE BIBLE WORTH? 369 

his own, and they received him not," but where 
else in the world would the seed of his kingdom 
have found any lodgment at all ? The multitude 
rejected him, but there was a remnant who did 
receive him, and to whom he gave power to be- 
come the sons of God. So the word of God, that 
had been painfully and dimly communicated to 
the ancient people in laws and ordinances and 
prophecies, in providential mercies and chasten- 
ings, in lives of saints and prophets and martyrs, 
was now made flesh, and dwelt among men full 
of grace and truth, and they beheld his glory. 

It is here that we find the real meaning of the 
Bible. "The end," as Canon Mozley has so 
strongly shown, "is the test of a progressive 
revelation." Jesus Christ, who is himself the 
Word, toward whom these laws and prophecies 
point, and in whom they culminate, is indeed the 
perfect Revelation of God. From his judgment 
there is no appeal ; at his feet the wisest of us 
must sit and learn the way of life. With his 
words all these old Scriptures must be compared ; 
so far as they agree with his teachings we may 
take them as eternal truth ; those portions of 
them which fall below this standard, we may 
pass by as a partial revelation upon us no longer 
binding. He himself has given us, in the Ser- 
mon on the Mount, the method by which we are 
to test the older Scriptures. When we refuse to 
apply his method and go on to declare every por- 
tion of those old records authoritative, we are not 



370 WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

honoring him. The mischief and bane of the 
traditional theory is that it equalizes things which 
are utterly unlike. When it says that " all the 
books of the Scripture are equally inspired ; all 
alike are infallible in what they teach," it puts 
the Gospels on the same level with Deuteronomy 
and Ecclesiastes and Esther. The effect of this 
is not to lift the latter up, but to drag the former 
down. They are not on the same level ; it is 
treason to our Master Christ to say that they are 
alike ; the one is as much higher than the other 
as the heavens are higher than the earth. 
— It is here, then, in the simple veracious records 
that bring before us the life of Christ, that we 
have the very Word of God. Whatever else the 
four Gospels may or may not be, they certainly 
do contain the story of the Life that has been for 
many centuries the light and the hope of the 
world. It is the same unique Person who stands 
before us in every one of these narratives, — 

"So meek, forgiving, godlike, high, 
So glorious in humility." 

What fault has criticism to find with this Life ? 
What word or deed is here ascribed to him that 
is not worthy of him, that is not like him ? Is it 
any wonder to us when we read this record 
through, that the guileless Nathanael cried out 
as he communed with him, " Rabbi, thou art the 
Son of God, thou art the King of Israel." 

If, then, the New Testament gives us the art- 
less record of the life and words of this divine 



HOW MUCH IS THE BIBLE WORTH? 37 1 

Person, the Son of God and the Saviour of the 
world ; if it brings Him before us and manifests 
to us, so far as words can do it, his power and 
his glory ; if it shows us how, by bearing witness 
to the truth in his life and in his death, he estab- 
lished in the world the kingdom which for long 
ages had been preparing ; if it makes known to 
us the messages he brought of pardon and salva- 
tion ; if it gives us the record of the planting and 
training of his church in the early ages, is there 
any need that I should go about to praise and 
magnify its worth to the children of men ? If light 
is worth anything to those who sit in darkness, or 
hope to those who are oppressed with tormenting 
doubt ; if wisdom is to be desired by those who 
are in perplexity, and comfort by those who are 
in trouble, and peace by those whose hearts are 
full of strife, and forgiveness by those who bear 
the burden of sin ; if strength is a good gift to 
the weak, and rest to the weary, and heaven to 
the dying, and the eternal life of God to the faint- 
ing soul of man, then the book that tells us of 
Jesus Christ and his salvation is not to be com- 
pared with any other book on earth for precious- 
ness ; it is the one book that every one of us 
ought to know by heart. 

The value of the Bible, the greatness of the 
Bible, are in this Life that it discloses to us. " It 
is upon Jesus," says a modern rationalist, " that 
the whole Bible turns. In this lies the value, 
not only of the New Testament, a great part of 



372 WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

which refers to him directly, but of the Old Tes- 
tament as well." Rationalist though he is, no 
man could have stated the truth more clearly. 
" It is upon Jesus that the whole Bible turns/' 
The Old Testament shows us the way preparing 
by which the swift feet of the messengers ap- 
proach that tell us of his coming ; the New Tes- 
tament lifts the veil and bids us, Behold the man ! 
The Bible is of value to us, just in proportion as 
it helps us to see him, to know him> to trust him. 
You may have a cast-iron theory of inspiration 
with every joint riveted ; you may believe in the 
infallible accuracy of every vowel point and every 
punctuation mark ;(jbut if the Bible does not 
bring you into a vital union with Jesus Christ, so 
that you have his mind and follow in his foot- 
steps, it profiteth you nothing.) And if, by your 
study of it, you are brought into this saving fel- 
lowship, your theories of inspiration will take 
care of themselves. 

I fear that we do not always comprehend the 
fact that it is this divine Life shining out of its 
pages that makes the Bible glorious. We strain 
our eyes so much in verifying commas, and in try- 
ing to prove that the dot of a certain i is not a 
fly-speck, that we fail to get much impression of 
the meaning or the beauty of the Saviour's life. 
See those two critics, with their eyes close to 
the wonderful " Ecce Homo " of Correggio, dis- 
puting whether there is or is not a visible stitch 
in the garment of Christ that ought to be seam- 



HOW MUCH IS THE BIBLE WORTH? 373 

less. How red their faces ; how hot their words ! 
Stand back a little, brothers ! look away, for a 
moment, from the garment's seam ; let the in- 
finite pain and the infinite pity and the infinite 
yearning of that Face dawn on you for a moment, 
and you will cease your quarreling. So, not sel- 
dom, do the idolaters of the letter wholly miss 
the meaning of the sacred book, and remain in 
mournful ignorance of him who himself is the 
Word. 

There are those to whom the view of the Bible 
presented in these chapters seems not only in- 
adequate but destructive. " If the Bible is not 
infallible/' they say, "it is no more than any 
other book ; we have no further use for it." In 
one of the leading church reviews I find these 
words, the joint utterance of two eminent Ameri- 
can theologians: "A proved error in Scripture 
contradicts not only our doctrine but the Scrip- 
ture's claims, and therefore its inspiration in 
making those claims." x A proved error in Scrip- 
ture stamps the book as fraudulent and worthless ! 
Worthless it is then ! Proved errors there are, 
scores of them. It is fatuity, it is imbecility, to 
deny it. And every man who can find an error 
in these old writings has the warrant of these 
teachers for throwing the book away. Tens of 
thousands of ingenuous and fair-minded men 
have taken the word of such teachers, and have 
thrown the book away. May God forgive the 
folly of these blind guides ! 

1 Presbyterian Review ', vol. ii. p. 245. 



374 WH0 WROTE THE BIBLE? 

But what stupid reasoning is this ! " If the 
Bible is not infallible, it is worthless." Your 
watch is not infallible ; is it therefore worthless ? 
Your physician is not infallible ; are his services 
therefore worthless ? Your father is not infal- 
lible ; are his counsels worthless ? Will you say 
that the moment you discover in him an error 
concerning any subject in heaven or on earth, 
that moment you will refuse to listen to his coun- 
sel ? The church of God is not infallible, and 
never was, whatever infatuated ecclesiastics may 
have claimed for it ; are its solemn services and 
its inspiring labors and its uplifting fellowships 
worthless ? 

"A ship on a lee shore," says one, "in the 
midst of a driving storm, throws up signal rock- 
ets or fires a gun for a pilot. A white sail 
emerges from the mist ; it is the pilot boat. A 
man climbs on board, and the captain gives to 
him the command of the ship. All his orders 
are obeyed implicitly. The ship, laden with a 
precious cargo and hundreds of human lives, is 
confided to a rough-looking man whom no one 
ever saw before, who is to guide them through a 
narrow channel, where to vary a few fathoms to 
the right or left will be utter destruction. The 
pilot is invested with absolute authority as re- 
gards bringing the vessel into port." * Is this 
because the man is infallible, because he has 

1 Orthodoxy ; its Truths and Errors, by James Freeman 
Clarke, p. 1 14. 



HOW MUCH IS THE BIBLE WORTH? 375 

never been detected in holding an erroneous 
opinion ? Doubtless any of these intelligent pas- 
sengers could find out, by half an hour's conver- 
sation with him, that his mind was full of crass 
ignorance and misconception. And nobody sup- 
poses that he is infallible, even as a pilot. He 
may make a mistake. What then ? Will these 
passengers gather around the captain, and de- 
mand that he be ordered down from the bridge 
and thrown overboard if he disobeys ? Will they 
say, "A pilot who is not on all subjects infalli- 
ble is one whom we will not trust ? " No ; they 
believe him to be, not omniscient, but competent 
and trustworthy, and a great burden is lifted 
from their hearts when they see him take com- 
mand of the ship. (On all other subjects besides 
religion, people are able to exercise their common 
sense ; why can they not use a modicum of the 
same common sense when they come to deal 
with religious truth ?^) 

It is not true, as a matter of fact, that the 
Bible no longer has any value for those who have 
ceased to hold the traditional view of it. Not 
seldom, indeed, those who have been compelled 
by overwhelming evidence to relinquish the tra- 
ditional view have been driven by the natural re- 
action against it to undervalue the Bible, and 
even to treat it with contempt and bitterness ; 
but even some of these have come back to it 
again and have found in it, when they studied it 
with open mind, more truth than they ever be- 



376 WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

fore had known. Let me cite an extreme case. 
I could take you to a society of free-thinkers, 
consisting of people who have long been out- 
spoken in their rejection of all the doctrines of 
historical Christianity, many of whom formerly 
flouted the Bible as a book of fables, but who are 
now studying it diligently week by week, in the 
most sympathetic spirit. They do not now ac- 
cept its supernaturalism ; but they believe that 
as a manual of conduct, as a guide to life, it ex- 
cels all other books. The young people of their 
Sunday-school are told that the Bible is not like 
other books ; that the men who wrote it knew 
more about the human soul and its struggles and 
its aspirations after good than any other men 
who ever lived ; and they are besought to attend, 
most carefully, to the lessons of life which this 
ancient book teaches. ( I should like to take some 
of our ultra orthodox friends, who are pettishly 
crying out that the Bible, if not infallible, is good 
for nothing, and set them down for a Sunday or 
two in the midst of this free-thinking Sunday- 
school ; they might learn some things about its 
value that they never knew before)* 

This incident ought to be of service, also, to 
those who, having discovered that the Bible con- 
tains human elements, have rushed to the conclu- 
sion that it is no more than any other book, and 
who, although they do not cast it from them, 
hold it off, at arm's length, as it were, and main- 
tain toward it an attitude of critical superiority. 



HOW MUCH IS THE BIBLE WORTH? 377 

Even these free-thinkers treat it more fairly. 
They are learning to approach it with open mind ; 
they sit down before it with reverent expectancy. 
The Bible has a right to this sympathetic treat- 
ment. It is not just like other books. Do not 
take my word for this ; listen rather to the testi- 
mony of one who was known, while he was alive, 
as the arch-heretic of New England : — 
^"This collection of books has taken such a 
hold on the world as no other. The literature of 
Greece, which goes up like incense from that 
land of temples and heroic deeds, has not half the 
influence of this book, from a nation alike de- 
spised in ancient and in modern times. It is 
read of a Sabbath in all the ten thousand pulpits 
of our land. In all the temples of religion is its 
voice lifted up week by week. The sun never 
sets on its gleaming page. It goes equally to 
the cottage of the plain man and the palace of 
the king. It is woven into the literature of the 
scholar, and colors the talk of the street. The 
bark of the merchant cannot sail the sea without 
it ; no ships of war go to the conflict, but the 
Bible is there. It enters men's closets ; mingles 
in all their grief and cheerfulness of life. The 
affianced maiden prays God in Scripture for 
strength in her new duties ; men are married by 
Scripture. The Bible attends them in their sick- 
ness, when the fever of the world is on them. 
The aching head finds a softer pillow when the 
Bible lies underneath. The mariner escaping 



378 WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

from shipwreck clutches this first of his treas- 
ures and keeps it sacred to God. It goes with 
the peddler in his crowded pack ; cheers him at 
eventide when he sits down dusty and fatigued ; 
brightens the freshness of his morning face. It 
blesses us when we are born, gives names to half 
Christendom ; rejoices with us ; has sympathy 
for our mourning ; tempers our grief to finer is- 
sues. It is the better part of our sermons. It 
lifts man above himself ; our best of uttered 
prayers are in its storied speech, wherewith our 
fathers and the patriarchs prayed. The timid 
man, about awaking from this dream of life, looks 
through the glass of Scripture and his eye grows 
bright ; he does not fear to stand alone, to tread 
the way unknown and distant, to take the death 
angel by the hand and bid farewell to wife and 
babes and home. Men rest on this their dearest 
hopes ; it tells them of God and of his blessed 
Son, of earthly duties and of heavenly rest."Jky 

This is not mere rhetoric ; it is simplest truth 
of human experience. How is it possible for any 
man to treat this book just as he would any other 
book ? He ought to come to its perusal with the 
expectation of finding in it wisdom and light and 
life. He must not stultify his reason and stifle 
his moral sense when he reads it ; he must keep 
his mind awake and his conscience active ; but 
there is treasure here if he will search for it ; 
search he must, yet the only right attitude before 

1 Theodore Parker, Discourses on Religion. 



HOW MUCH IS THE BIBLE WORTH? 379 

it is one of reverence and trust. Any man of 
ripe wisdom and high character, who has been 
known to you all your life, whose judgment you 
have verified, whose goodness you have witnessed 
and experienced, commands your respectful atten- 
tion the moment he begins to speak. You do 
not believe him to be infallible, but you listen to 
what he says with trustfulness ; you expect to 
find it true. To say that you listen to him as 
you do to every other man is not the fact ; the 
posture of your mind in his presence is different 
from that in which you stand before most other 
men. It ought to be. He has gained, by his 
probity, the power to speak to you with author- 
ity. The Bible has gained the same power. 
You do not use it fairly when you use it as you 
do every other book. 

There is the nation's flag proudly flying from 
the summit of the Capitol. It may be a banner 
that was borne upon the battlefield, decorated 
now with well-mended rents, and with stains of 
carnage. " Behold it ! " cries the idolater. " It 
is absolutely faultless in perfection and beauty ! 
There is not a blemish on its folds, there is not 
an imperfection in its web ; every thread in warp 
and woof is flawless ; every seam is absolutely 
straight ; every star is geometrically accurate ; 
every proportion is exact; the man who denies 
it is a traitor ! " 

" Absurd!" replies the iconoclast. "See the 
holes and the stains ; there is not one straight 



380 WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? 

seam ; there is not a star that is in perfect form ; 
ravel it, and you will find no thread in warp or 
woof that is flawless ; nay, you may even dis- 
cover shreds of shoddy mixed with the fine fibre. 
Your flag is nothing more than any other old 
piece of bunting, and if you think it is, you are 
a fool." 

Nay, good friends, you are both wrong. The 
blemishes are there ; it would be fanaticism to 
deny them ; and he who says that no man can 
be loyal to the nation who will not profess that 
this banner is immaculate is setting up a fantas- 
tic standard of patriotism. But, on the other 
hand, this flag is something more than any other 
old piece of bunting, and he who thinks it some- 
thing more is not a fool. It is the symbol of 
liberty ; it is the emblem of sovereignty ; it is the 
pledge of protection ; it is the sign and guarantee 
of justice and order and peace. What memories 
cluster round it, of dauntless heroism, and holy 
sacrifice, and noble consecration ! What hopes 
are gleaming from its stars and fluttering in its 
shining folds — hopes of a day when wars shall 
be no more and all mankind shall be one brother- 
hood ! The man to whom the flag of his country 
is no more than any other piece of weather- 
beaten bunting is a man without a country. 
7 Is not my parable already interpreted ? Are 
not the idolaters who make it treason to disbe- 
lieve a single word of the Bible, and the icono- 
clasts who treat it as nothing better than any 



HOW MUCH IS THE BIBLE WORTH? 38 1 

other book, equally far from the truth ? Is it not 
the part of wisdom to use the book rationally, but 
reverently ; to refrain from worshiping the let- 
ter, but to rejoice in the gifts of the Spirit which 
it proffers ? The same divine influence which 
illumines and sanctifies its pages is waiting to 
enlighten our minds that we may comprehend its 
words, and to prepare our hearts that we may re- 
ceive its messages. Some things hard to under- 
stand are here, but the Spirit of truth can make 
plain to us all that we need to know. ( No man 
wisely opens the book who does not first lift up 
his heart for help to find in it the way of life, 
and to him who studies it in this spirit it will 
show the salvation of God.) 



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